Vinius

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Yesterday we toured the town of Vilnius. During the walk to breakfast we passed a bridge covered with locks of every conceivable size and shape. Apparently, when couples get married they attach a lock to the bridge as a symbol of their love, commitment, and new found imprisonment. As the walk continued one of our leaders pointed out that the men of Lithuania like to wear man bags and incredibly pointy shoes. Honestly, one of my favorite things has to been to look at what everyone is wearing. I mean the Coliseum was great and all...(joking...-kind of:) Unfortunately, some parasitic forms of fashion have wiggled their way in, not unlike a tape worm on an exotic island, including Hello Kitty T-shirts, Crocs, and High School Musical apparel. The walk continued to continue (I get the feeling that I'm going to be doing a lot of that-walking) and Natalija explained that the first couple days are amusing as everyone is very jet-lagged. A few years ago, one guy was so tired that as the first dinner progressed, his head bobbed deeper and deeper towards the table. After some time, he leaned so far forward that his head came into contact with the candle and caught on fire. The girl next to him, thinking quickly, smacked him across the head to extinguish the flames. "What?" he asked groggily. "Your hair was on fire!" she exclaimed. "Oh."

The first stop on our tour was a building which had formerly been used as a prison by the Nazi's and then by the KGB and which now was a museum. You know something, the KGB were jerks. Our guide told us about various forms of torture and showed us how the cell wall had been painted sixteen times because prisoners had desperately written out their stories on the wall, a final testament to a world most of them would never see again. Then he took us to the execution chamber, a small, dark cave with drains in the floor to direct all the blood and walls riddled with bullet holes. The guide explained to us that his grandfather had been a Freedom Fighter until he was captured and killed by the KGB. His body was dumped in the town square to be claimed by the family. When his grandmother went retrieve the body of her dead husband the KGB watched like hawks. If they saw her crying she would be thrown into prison. It wasn't until she got home that she could weep.

Next we went to a couple churches. Lithuania's church history is very interesting because they were last European country to become Christian, and for a long time they held pagan services in Christain churches so that their more devout neighbors would start trading with them again. Then we went down into the catacombs which smelled a lot like the inside of an old ice skate but where it was fun learning about the deceased Lithuanian royalty.

Oh, and the last note worthy thing that happened was that I tasted some chocolate that tasted exactly like eggnog! Wow.