March 11, 2010 (Kovo 11-ąją), celebrates the 20th anniversary of modern-day, independent Lithuania; though it was nearly three and a half tumultuous years before the last Soviet troops retreated to Moscow. On this day I reflect on my first trip to Lithuania, and all the things I could not have done if it were not for those brave men and women who stood up to the Supreme Soviet and declared their independence.
I first came to Lithuania in July of 1997 to study the Lithuanian language at Vilnius University. I lived with Irma, my pen-pal of four years and her family in their flat in Justiniškės on the north edge of the city. My teacher, Elvira, was perhaps the best language teacher I’ve ever had, and I enjoyed every minute of her morning grammar class. During the mid-morning break, I ran through the university courtyard out to Pilies gatvė with my Finnish classmate Hanna where we would buy fresh bandalės (pastries) and cartons of orange juice. We often returned late to class with mouthfuls of the sweet pastries.
We frequented The Pub, otherwise known as Prie Universiteto (By the University), where we could sit outside in the courtyard on a sunny day. Modeled after an English pub, they served shepherd’s pie, burgers, greasy vegetarian lasagna (which I loved), margarita pizza and of course, kepta duona. The courtyard was great in the evenings too, with Christmas lights strung everywhere and a live band often playing, we would sip our half-liters of Utenos or Kalnapilis (I don’t think they sold Švyturys then) and mix with the locals. After a nearly 15-year run, The Pub closed its doors in Spring 2009, but has re-opened as Universiteto Pub. Featuring a wine bar and store, it’s even less of a pub than it was to begin with.
In the afternoons we had conversation class, but Hanna and I preferred to spend that time at Ponių Laimė stuffing ourselves with French-style coffee and cakes. Splashing through puddles left from the daily downpour, we strolled arm in arm down Gedimino prospektas. Those were good days.
I arrived that summer with no real idea of what to expect. Driving through the city center from the airport, I looked out the window and wondered 1. What I had gotten myself into, and 2. How the heck I was supposed to represent “this country” in the Olympics. (My newly acquired Lithuanian citizenship was in large part because I was a ski racer with my sights set on Salt Lake City.)
I felt out-of-place, a stranger in a strange but somehow familiar land. After a month, I was completely at home in Lithuania, almost arrogantly so. I had no concept (and perhaps still don’t) about what it was really like to grow up inside Soviet Lithuania. But that doesn’t matter now, and it’s not what this post is about.
I came back in January of 1999 with my father. It was his homecoming. We traveled by train from where I was living in France. It was a nightmare of a trip, 48 hours from Rennes to Kaunas, and I was stuck in a tiny compartment on an old Polish train from Frankfurt to Warsaw alone with my dad. It’s a toss-up to say if that was the worst part, or was it waiting in the cold, dark station at 5:00 AM in Suwalki or the train we boarded at the border in Šeštokai, which had wooden park benches and stopped every several minutes to pick up an old woman with a bucket of potatoes in the middle of a field. The 100km (60mi) journey took over five hours. When we finally did arrive, it was a dream come true for my father.
What I remember most about that trip is how dark it was. Lithuania had switched time zones to CET, meaning that in the dead of winter, it was light at 7:00 AM, but pitch-black at 3:00 AM. It was also extremely cold, though there wasn’t that much snow on the ground. Of course, after five and a half years in Vilnius, I’m now used to having one week in January where daytime highs are in the -30s ºC. It was a different kind of trip too. Instead of passing carefree days wandering the old town eating junk food, we met with many of my father’s contacts, got a private tour of the Seimas (Parliament building), hand delivered a tape of an interview with my great-uncle, Balys Gražulis, to the Lithuanian Historical Society, and visited the library dedicated to him and his efforts during WWII in his hometown of Varena. We stood atop the sight of the future Liepkalnis ski slope, and met our cousins in Kaunas for the first time.
To reach Lithuania in the summer of 2000, I took a ferry from Karlsham, in the south of Sweden. It was a Lithuanian-owned ferry, a small and shabby boat carrying mostly truckers, a far cry from the grand Viking Line boat I later took from Helsinki back to Stockholm. I arrived in the industrial port in Klaipeda and took a bus to the bus station where I caught a microbus to Vilnius for only 10lt as I remember. That would have been $2.50 at the time. I spent a week in Vilnius with Irma. My friend Linas was studying that summer in Vilnius University and had Elvira for a teacher. I got to surprise her when I went with him to class. The city had changed quite a bit in the three years since I had first arrived; there were more shops and restaurants open, and more people on the street in the Old Town. And it was cleaner—that is something that I really remember from that trip. I spent a night in Kaunas, but my cousins were in Palanga so I visited them there, enjoying the white sandy beach and warm August water on the Baltic coast.
And so, in December of 2003, I arrived in Lithuania on a one-way ticket. As a little girl wearing a Lithuanian-American flag pin on my leather bomber jacket, I could never have imagined how that daring act made by a few brave Lithuanians on March 11, 1990, would change my life.
Thank you to them, and to all who participated in the struggle for the right to speak our own language and practice the traditions taught to me by my grandmother. The friends I have made and the time I have spent Lietuvojė* is but one small part of their great legacy.