Counting change

In the U.S., we normally deal with only four coins: the quarter, dime, nickel and penny. We do have dollar and half-dollar coins, but it’s rare to see them. In Lithuania, there are nine coins: 5 litai, 2 litai, 1 litas, 50 centų, 20 centų, 10 centų, 5 centai, 2 centai and 1 centas. (Another grammar oddity in case you noticed: it’s centų in some instances because multiples of 10, and numbers in the teens, take the genitive case.)

Counting out change can take a while if you’re not accustomed to the system of size graduations and weights among the coins.

The 1, 2 and 5 litai coins are the heaviest, and they are graduated in size. The 5 is bronze in color rimmed with silver; the 2 is silver rimmed with bronze; the 1 is all silver. The 50, 20 and 10 centų coins are all bronze and are also graduated in size as a group, as are the 5, 2 and 1 litai, which are all silver. Sounds reasonable so far, right?

The 5 litai coin is the largest of all, so no problem. Here’s why I get confused: Coin weights vary a bit, but size variations are minute, and there are size overlaps among the groupings of denominations. The 2 litai is the same size as the 5 centai. The 1 litas is the same size and color as the 2 centai. The 50 centų is between the 1 litas and 2 litai (and therefore between the 5 centai and 2 centai) in size. The 20 centų is between the 2 centai and 1 centas in size. The 10 centų is the smallest coin of all. Maybe they were thinking of our dime when they decided on that. Oi!

The distinctions are even harder to discern when have a big pile in your hand and you’re being asked for exact change when there’s a long line of other customers behind you. I hadn’t experienced this in Vilnius, because it seemed that most everything was rounded up to the litas. It’s been a bit different in Kaunas.

A couple weeks ago I was getting lunch at Lietuviški Patekelai, a quick-moving, cafeteria-style restaurant at the head of Laisvės Alėja. When I got to the register, I proffered a 20 litų note for an 8-and-change litai meal. The cashier asked if I had exact change. I should have said no, but I was distracted by the conversation I was having with my lunch companion. I fished out several days’ accumulation of coins from my bag.

The reason I had so much change was precisely because I didn’t want to appear slow or stupid in these situations so I had been using paper money as much as possible whenever centų (or centai) were involved. Well, I was now holding up the line fumbling with an unnecessarily huge handful of change. The cashier finally said, in Lithuanian, “Put it down, I’ll do it.”

I slid the mountain of coins onto the dish that’s kept by the register. One rarely hands cash or credit cards to anyone; bills and payments are placed–and receipts and change received–on a dish or in a container specifically for that purpose. The cashier speedily counted out what was needed and put the rest of it back on the plate. I said, “Ačiū,” scooped up what was left of my change and slunk away.

My latest strategy is to leave anything I have that’s less than 20 centų with the tip when eating out. It’s worked well so far. Maybe too well. It took me a week to accumulate enough small change to make the photo.

Vive la difference

Yesterday I had lunch with my classmate Jian from China and her Lithuanian husband, Laurynas, the urban planner. Laurynas remarked that living here must feel very different than living in the States, and he asked me what the biggest differences were. I had a hard time answering because it doesn’t really feel all that different, and also because it’s hard for me to think quickly under pressure on an empty stomach.

He was surprised when I said some things made more sense, like parking garages that tell you how many spaces are available in each aisle and malls organized by store type. Not that way in America? No, we like to keep it challenging.

After lunch I had a chance to think more about the differences I’ve encountered over the last three weeks, some of which have required some small paradigm shifts. Some are for the better, a couple inconvenient and some just different. In no particular order:

Seating yourself at restaurants.
We did a lot of waiting around at the doors of restaurants and cafes here until we realized that it’s almost always a seat-yourself affair. If a table is reserved, it will have a sign on it. Otherwise, anything is fair game unless you’re at the fanciest of restaurants. I find it’s nice to be able to choose where to sit.

No one uses napkins.
Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement, but people generally don’t put napkins on their laps or reach for them unless they get really messy. Some restaurants don’t bring even bring them with the meal or have them on the table. Utensils come in these nifty little fabric pockets (no, they don’t double as napkins) or in baskets. I think you’re expected to be neat or something, which is a real challenge for me. Those who have eaten with me know that it’s rare that I come away without a deposit on the top shelf. Which actually has very little to do with napkin use, come to think of it.

No decaf coffee.
I’m not a big coffee drinker anymore since I quit caffeine years ago to get rid of my heart palpitations. I may have an occasional small cup in the morning. In the evening, though, if I’m with a group that’s all having coffee, I might order a decaf. Since I can’t, and I want to sleep at night, I stick to water.

Little to no diet or low-fat food.
The lowest fat milk available at the grocery is 2.5% and there are cases and cases of ice cream. Despite eating full-fat versions of dairy products and their love of bacon, sour cream and potatoes, most Lithuanians, especially the young people, are thin. I think it has something to do with right-sized portions, food that actually has flavor and makes you feel full on less, and a lot of walking. Hmmmm…

Walking for hours a day.
I like to walk and I was expecting to walk. But the shoes that seemed sooooo comfortable in the store had other ideas and I had to make a major adjustment to my footwear plan. On day one, the cute black Merrills blistered the top of my left foot; on day two, the Dr. Scholl’s sandals gave me a blister across the back of my right heel from which I still have not fully recovered after almost four weeks. I am living in a pair of unlovely Crocs that I almost didn’t pack. I do want to note that while Crocs suffer derision at home, I am seeing them on the feet of European tourists and in the shoe stores at the Akropolis. My most comfortable two days were spent in my hiking shoes on our camping trip.

Escalator ramps rather than stairs.
At the Akropolis, these allow you to take your shopping cart or stroller with you, but it’s a little scary for a naturally clumsy girl to be riding up or down a moving hill. I haven’t fallen yet. Keep your fingers crossed that I don’t. Or if I do, that I don’t take others with me.

Lack of window screens.
This is a pet peeve of mine anywhere I’ve stayed in Europe. Why are screens uniquely American? Everyone has bugs and miscellaneous wind-borne detritus, and no one wants them in the house, so why invite them in if you can prevent it? I’ve wracked my brain and the only possible reason I can think of is that the old buildings across Europe have windows that are so non-standard in size that it’s diseconomic to either manufacture or purchase them. I’m just getting a little bored with the daily game of trap and release I play with the bees.

Not flushing your used toilet paper.
We saw it first at Europos Parkas, then at Niuronys, and now in many places in Kaunas. Signs asking you to dispose of your used toilet paper in the waste bin next to the toilet rather than flushing it. Or just a bin next to the toilet because it’s understood that you know why it’s there. Though not necessary at most newer hotels and facilities, and thankfully not necessary at the dorm, many older facilities have shaky plumbing and it’s evidently crazy expensive to upgrade. I have to confess that I sometimes forget until after I’ve tossed the paper into the bowl, and I feel so guilty when I flush, thinking I might be creating a problem down the line.

Near-ubiquitous wifi.
As I’ve written before, it’s terrific that wifi is available, and free, at the mall and on Laisvės alėja in Kaunas, in many city cafes and restaurants, and at the universities. Except, of course, in my dorm. That’s why I may seem to be spending so much time at the Akropolis. So, those who know me and my general distaste for malls, no, I have not changed. In fact, I haven’t set foot in a store since Alex went home, except for the Maxima for groceries. I may have to break down and do some shoe-shopping, though, as the aforementioned Crocs are weighing heavily on my psyche.

Incredibly good and inexpensive food.
I’m finishing this post at Tetule’s Sriubine. A sriubine is part cafeteria, part restaurant and serves mostly soups, but some other hot dishes, too. My huge bowl of kopustu sriuba (yummy cabbage soup) and kompotas (a juice made from steeping dried fruit in water) was 5 litai, the equivalent of about $2.

Little signs

Just a few little things that caught my eye during an afternoon of wandering around Kaunas.

Love, legacy or lunacy

The question I heard most frequently last week was, “Why do you want to learn Lithuanian?” It was asked by the teachers. It was asked of each other by the language students. It was asked, among other questions, by the grad student who interviewed me after the Refresh course.

It’s not such an odd question if you know a little about the peculiarities of the language. The “In Your Pocket” guides have an amusing, if slightly irreverent, take: “Lithuanian is a very odd language indeed. One of the oldest still spoken today, albeit not standardized until just a century ago, the tongue that time forgot supposedly shares many of the same words with, of all things, Sanskrit. With seven noun cases, four declension patterns, absolutely no similarity to anything you’ve ever heard before and an obligation to pronounce the stress on every word in the right place to stand any chance whatsoever of being understood, getting to grips with the local lingo can take a while.” So why indeed?

Bo, Fabio and I discussed this on our walk to lunch the other day. Bo (pronounced boo) is an engineer from Stockholm who has a slight stutter and is a hair shorter than I am. He professed to have a theory about why people are motivated to learn Lithuanian, and asked us what our reasons were.

Fabio–who looks nothing like the other Fabio–is a tall, thin, pale, short-haired northern Italian just a year post grad school. He’s an adorable and sincere overachiever with a slightly nerdy streak accented by his glasses. My niece would love him. He has a girlfriend in Vilnius and is trying to learn Lithuanian quickly so he can get a job here.

I’m studying so that I can honor my heritage and pass it along, speak with my relatives in Lithuania, communicate more easily when I’m over here and participate more fully in the Lithuanian community at home.

Bo is a language nut and learns them as a hobby. He either speaks or is learning something like nine languages, including his native Swedish, Norwegian, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese. I don’t remember the others. He’s in the advanced class.

Bo said that the three of us fit his theory perfectly. He says he’s found that there are three reasons that one learns Lithuanian: 1) if you have a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or wife who is Lithuanian, 2) if you have Lithuanian ancestry or 3) if you’re crazy. I boil that down to love, legacy or lunacy.

Our intermediate class of nine mostly fits Bo’s categories. Rune from Norway has a Lithuanian wife. They live in Oslo but keep an apartment in Kaunas. Jian from China moved to Kaunas when her husband got a job here as an urban planner. Dmitro from Ukraine lives in Vilnius with his wife and kids, and is commuting from there every day. You already know Fabio’s story. I think that covers love.

Ondrej (pronounced on-jay) and Dana are students from the Czech Republic who have some Lithuanian ancestry. Vašek, also from the Czech Republic, may just be crazy, as often seems to come to class suffering from the previous night’s revelry. He said his year as a high-school exchange student in Milwaukee was the best time of his life because it was a basically a year off from school and all he did was party.

We have one classmate who might blow Bo’s theory. Miguel from Spain has been at grad school here at VMU for three years and has just decided to get serious about learning the language rather than getting by in English like his fellow students. He mumbles both his Lithuanian and English over the gum he is constantly chewing so it’s a bit difficult to understand him in either language but I forgive him because he’s also a photographer.

So we’ll just add one more reason to the list of why one learns Lithuanian: love, legacy, lunacy, and living and learning in Lithuania.

Lietus lyja

Lietus lyja is how Lithuanians say it’s raining. I heard it for all the years my grandmother was alive and living with us, and I heard it again from my cousin and her friend when we met in Vilnius. If you translate it literally, it means the rain is raining, which is sort of redundant, but what’s meant is that the rain is falling.

Lietus lyja. I like the sound of the words together. They have an alliterative, sing-songy charm. And they are most effective when coupled with a slight sigh and a vaguely resigned tone of voice.

The resigned tone is common here. Lithuania is named for rain. Lietuva. I heard a joke that the English name should be changed to Lithurainia. Lithu-rain-ia, get it? Fine, don’t laugh, it’s not my joke anyway.

July is the summer’s rainiest month here, and it’s always advisable to carry an umbrella. I did when I went out at noon because the skies were grey and the air was cool and heavy. As I walked from the bendrabutis to the turgus (market) and then back with a detour through Ramybes Parkas (Peace Park), the skies cleared and the sun came back with a vengeance. I slipped back into the dorm to change into something cooler.

By the time I got upstairs and peeled off my top, the winds began to blow and raindrops followed shortly. In about 20 minutes, we were in the midst of a downpour. After an hour, just when I thought I wouldn’t be able to go back out again, the skies began to clear once more.

I’m heading back out, with my umbrella, just in case.

But you speak…

July 26

When I walked into the room at Vytautus Magnus University to take the summer course language test, I was handed two pieces of paper and told to sit anywhere at the large conference table. Others were already bent over their tests.

I looked at the papers I was handed, and began to sweat. One was an illustration of a family packing for vacation. The other contained several exercises, the instructions for which were all written in Lithuanian. I couldn’t really understand any of the instructions, but I was bound and determined not to end up in the beginner group. I didn’t want to waste my time relearning the grammar system and basic conversations. I would just have to exercise logic and guess at what they wanted.

I recognized the word paveikslas (picture or painting) in the first exercise, plus a form of the verb rašyti, to write. There were 10 blank lines under the instruction, so I guessed that they wanted us to describe what was going on in the illustration. My vocabulary is very limited, and I certainly didn’t know the words for many of the items pictured: a badminton shuttlecock, a fishing pole, a stuffed animal, a raquet, a blow-up ducky inner tube. I didn’t even know the words for packing, wearing, carrying or holding. Or vacation.

I resorted to first-grade sentences: There is a bird. There is a dog. There is a house. The man has a hat. (Has, has… wait, does the verb to have take accusative or genitive? What is the accusative ending for a feminine singular noun in the second declension? Crap, I should have this memorized by now.) The boy also has a hat. The woman has a dress with flowers. The woman has a purse. The girl is on the grass. The cat is in the car. The grandmother is in the window. The family is going to the sea and is happy. (Okay, that last one wasn’t actually illustrated so much as inferred, but I had to somehow demonstrate that I could put more than three words together.)

I got a bit of a break after that, because the next exercise was to conjugate two verbs in just the first person. Verbs I can do, most of the time. The present, past, future and past frequentive for the irregular verb būti, to be: aš esu (I am), aš buvau (I was), aš būsiu (I will be), as būdavau (I used to be). Now valgyti, to eat: aš valgau, valgiau, valgysiu, valgydavau.

Next exercise: a list of words at the top, and an equal number of sentences with blanks. I know a fill-in-the blank when I see one, but I had two problems. The first was that I have a limited vocabulary in Lithuanian and only recognized the root forms for about half of the words listed. The second problem was that I still cannot remember which endings go with which seven parts of speech in each of the five noun declensions. It’s essential to know them for sentences to make sense, especially as the ending of the word takes the place of a preposition in some instances, and sometimes the same ending indicates a different part of speech depending on whether the word is masculine or feminine and in which declension it is. For example, vyrai is nominative plural of the masculine noun vyras. But rankai is dative singular for the feminine noun ranka. I knew I’d be relying on logic and the process of elimination. If the sentence mentioned driving and a ticket, it must be the word that has bus as the root. I think I got about half right.

The final exercise consisted of 10 sentences each in a two-column grid, one column numbered and the other one preceded by letters. I finally got that the numbers across the bottom of the page with blanks under them meant that they were looking to match the statement in the first column with the correct response in the second. After matching “Merry Christmas” with “You, too” and a few other simple questions and answers concerning names, addresses and dorm room numbers, I had to again rely on logic and the process of elimination for the rest, but think I got them all.

After handing in the test, I joined the other students in the waiting area. Once the written tests are graded, you go back one by one for a short conversation to determine comprehension and conversational skill. Then they decide in which class you belong.

When I went back in, I was asked my name, and the teachers shuffled through the pile of papers to find my test. They looked it over and then asked in Lithuanian where I was from and why I wanted to learn the language. I answered in Lithuanian, telling them that I was studying in Philadelphia, that my teacher was from Kaunas and that all of my grandparents came from Lithuania. They looked a bit surprised, then pleased. We had a bit more small talk: what was my teacher’s name, from where in Lithuania did my grandparents come. Then they conferred.

Much to my surprise, I was given the choice to join either the advanced or intermediate group. They encouraged me to start in the advanced class, repeating, “But you speak…” I kept saying, “But not well… And my grammar is bad… And my vocabulary is small…” We agreed that I could start out in the intermediate class, but if either the teacher or I thought it was too easy, I could transfer to the advanced class before the end of the week.

I walked to lunch with a couple of other students, comparing notes on where we placed, and if we were happy. I was. Once I got back to the dorm, though, I couldn’t do much more than take a nap.

Kempingas

July 23 and 24

Even though I had been to Druskininikai and Gruto Parkas before, and even though I was a bit leery about “camping,” I opted to go on the weekend trip because there were a couple of other stops on the itinerary that would give us a chance to experience a bit more nature than I would find in Kaunas over the next few weeks.

We were on the bus at 9 a.m. and at Punio Šilo in short order. Our guide, perhaps a park ranger, led us through the woods for two hours. Only he and I had the right shoes for the hike. I’m not quite sure how the concepts of camping, hike in the woods and rain added up to sandals or cloth sneakers for the others, but I’m not judging. We passed a number of interesting wood carvings on our way deeper into the woods as well as a number of people picking mushrooms. This particular forest contains a large number of red-listed species as well as some of the oldest trees in Lithuania. Part is a strict reserve where no hiking is allowed.

I had on long pants and long-sleeved shirt so I didn’t use any bug spray. I regretted that a bit later when Kristina found a deer tick on her leg. We all checked ourselves, and I found one on my leg as well. Later that night, right before bed, I found a second on my neck. I sure hope they don’t have Lyme disease in Lithuania.

Our next stop was Gruto Parkas, a sculpture park that contains the salvaged statues of Soviet notables that were removed from public places after independence. Also on exhibit are artwork, memorabilia and propaganda posters from the era of occupation. This is mixed in with a small zoo, a children’s playground and a couple of restaurants. The entire experience is slightly bizarre. Controversial when it first opened, the park serves as a reminder of what once was in the hopes that it will never happen again.

At Drusininkai kempingas, we settled into our trailer homes before dinner. I was grateful that we weren’t sleeping in the teepees. Some other campers were in sites that accommodated their tents and RVs, and I had a chance to lust over a VW Eurovan with a pop-up sleeping loft, which is on my list of all-time favorite cars.

I asked and found out that the native Lithuanians with us didn’t know about s’mores, which are an American camping staple, so we went to the Maxima to try to find the ingredients. Because there were no graham crackers, puffy white marshmallows or Hershey bars to be found, we made some major substitutions, buying Nykstukas biscuits, some smaller, multi-colored marshmallow-like candies and a couple of thicker dark chocolate bars. It was too wet for an outdoor fire, so I toasted the “marshmallows” over a gas burner in one of our trailer homes. What we bought evidently had a much higher sugar content than the marshmallows at home, so it was difficult to keep them from flaming out before getting soft and melty. The other problem was that the chocolate was of a better quality and much denser, so it didn’t melt from the heat of the marshmallows when sandwiched together between the biscuits. Despite not being quite the same, the Lietuvos s’mores proved popular, perhaps because they were accompanied by beer, and Lukas ate at least five by himself.

That night I slept well, snuggled in bed with a comforter because it was so cold out.

The next day we spent more time outdoors, walking through the woods near Druskinikai, at the pilis in Liškiava and at a small beach by a lake where some went swimming (not being a sun worshipper, I sat in the shade to finish reading my book, Let the Great World Spin). On the drive back to Kaunas, we passed through Miklusenai, so I did get to see, however fleetingly, one of the places where Grandmom lived.

What are you?

July 22

I got a gasp from the Lithuanian grad students when the lecturer went around the room asking, “What do you say when people ask what are you?” and I answered, “Lithuanian.” The morning’s lecture and discussion were on Lithuanian identity and what it means to be Lithuanian.

Before I caused a riot, I qualified my answer, saying that in America when one is asked, the question is about one’s ancestry or ethnicity. At home, people already know I’m American but want to know what my unusual last name is. Outside of either the U.S. or Lithuania, I’d say I was American. In Lithuania, outside of the class, I usually say, “I’m from America, but my grandparents all came from Lithuania.” For some reason it’s important for me to make that statement, claim that identity.

Our lecturer had gone to America as a child, one of the “displaced persons,” in the second wave of Lithuanian emigrees following WWII. A historian, he worked for 32 years at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History, where he said they spent a lot of time discussing what it means to be an American. They concluded that when someone says “I am [fill in the blank],” it means that they subscribe to that particular country’s constitution or equivalent. It was an interesting discussion, and I made a note to buy his book, Lithuanian Cultural Legacy in America, when I was in Vilnius because I could get it there less expensively than waiting until I got home.

After lunch we took public transportation (bus) to Pažaislis monastery. The vadovai had warned us about the buses, but I found them to be as nice as or nicer than in Philly. Pažaislis had been created for the Camodolian monks, but the buildings and grounds had been damaged from military use over the years, beginning in 1812 when Napolean used the chapel to stable his horses, and continuing when the buildings were used as a military hospital and hospital laundry.

The monastery is now occupied by the Sisters of St. Casimir, who run the museum and watch over the renovations. They are the same order of Lithuanian nuns who ran my high school in the U.S.–yet another personal connection for me on this trip. They have a sizable apple orchard there, just as they had at my school. I think that orchards are a very Lithuanian thing, as I’ve noticed that most village homes have at least one apple tree.

On the way to and from Pažaislis, we passed Kauno maris, or the Kaunas Sea, an expansive, man-made body of water created by damming a portion of the river. Under the “sea” are a handful of villages that were flooded in the making of the reservoir, including the village in which our course coordinator’s grandmother lived. It’s apparently dangerous to swim there, though many people do, because there are many open wells on the submerged properties that create eddies that can suck one down into oblivion.

In the evening, I retreated to the Akropolis for air conditioning and Face Time with Elena (gotta love the free wifi and the free Apple-to-Apple communication method). It’s becoming my daily fix, but I’ll be jonesing over the weekend because we’re going kempingas. It’s a borrowed word with a Lithuanian transliteration and ending so they can deal with it grammatically–I know you can figure it out.

Next: weekend class trip

Lithuanian games

July 21

Rumšiškės is an open-air ethnographic museum. What that means is that old buildings were brought from all over Lithuania to this location and painstakingly rebuilt and refurbished. It’s organized geographically into the different regions of the country and gives one an idea of what life was like on farms and in villages and small towns for people of all different economic circumstances in the 18th and 19th century.

It was a hot day but that didn’t stop our hosts from expecting participation in a series of games that I can only assume was good, clean fun out on the farm in the old days. The first competition consisted of teams of four placing their feet into rough bindings on long, wooden multi-person skis and racing (I use the word loosely) down the field and back without falling over. You try turning a pair of skis with three other people attached to them. The second game was also one of team coordination, requiring groups of four to clench a long pole between their thighs and race up and back without touching it or dropping it. The women aced it. The men just couldn’t do it without using their hands.

Other games included time trials for holding a five-kilo mallet on outstretched arms for one to two minutes, throwing dart-like objects with horsehair tails at a targets and a ring toss. The final competition involved teams of three running in relay around a stump twice, then picking up a hammer and getting one blow to hit a nail into the stump. The first team to drive the nail all the way in was the winner. My Habitat for Humanity training came in handy with the nail driving, and my team won the first heat but lost the second to the guys. The games ended with a manually powered approximation of the amusement park swing ride. Quite ingenious, really. Those ukininkai knew how to have fun in the kaimas.

By that time we were really ready for lunch, and revived ourselves over a quite delicious pork loin with a side of potatoes and a cabbage/cucumber slaw. I politely tasted the gira, a slighty fizzy fermented bread drink, but it was a bit thick and warm for my taste.

We spent the rest of the afternoon traveling from village to village, and I kept trying to picture my grandparents in the homes of the regions in which they grew up. In the miestelis (little city, as opposed to rural village), we watched artisans making jewelry, wood carvings and intricate weavings. In the “farmlands,” there were small fields of rye, flax (from which linen is made) and wheat, all of which were important economically. Our guide told us that the Lithuanians have a riddle that goes, “When does the sky lay down on the ground?” The answer is, “When the flax blooms,” because the flower blankets the field in a beautiful sky blue. The flax was just beginning to bud, so perhaps I’ll get to see the sky lying on the ground somewhere before I leave the country.

We were back at the bendrabutis just in time for a huge rainstorm, which cooled things down considerably. It would be comfortable for sleeping. I also
got my refrigerator, so I put my apples in, but it was too late for the herring and salad greens. I’m looking forward to having cold water to drink. I would liberate my milk from Kristina the next day.

Because of the rain, I stayed in and messaged Elena. There was a brief clearing at 9, but then the skies opened up again with a vengeance, thundering with a resonance that set off car alarms.

I was in bed early, hoping for a better sleep than I’d been having. I figured that if I got up early enough I could go to Laisvės Alėja in the morning before class for the wifi. I feel so disconnected.

Next: Lithuanian indentity

Family ties

July 20

This day’s lecture was on the period of Soviet occupation in Lithuania. Interestingly enough, it was given by an American grad student from the University of Washington who doesn’t have an ounce of Lithuanian blood. She’s a history major specializing in Russia and eastern Europe who just fell in love with Lithuania once she began to study the country. She’s been here nearly a year on a Fulbright, and is doing research for her dissertation on Kalantines, the events surrounding the immolation suicide of Romas Kalanta in Kaunas in 1972 as a protest aginst Soviet repression.

Lithuania during its brief independence didn’t have a hugely sophisticated government with many alliances and was ripe for the picking when Germany and Soviet Russia signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939 dividing up Europe. Lithuania was forced to create a Soviet friendly government, and its president fled. Over two days in 1941, 34,000 people were deported, many to Siberian prisons. My grandmother’s nephew was among this first wave of deportees, as he was both a doctor and an officer.

The Soviets’ plan to deport many more was put on hold for four years when Germany violated the treaty and occupied Lithuania from June 1941 to July 1944 and murdered 95 percent of Lithuania’s Jews. When Stalin regained Lithuania In 1944, he continued deportations of more than 100,000 Lithuanians to the far reaches of Siberia, many inside the inhospitable Arctic Circle and some so close to Alaska that they actually believed that they might be taken to America. Collectivization of farms and placement of Russian people into Lithuanian homes followed the deportations. Up until almost the time that Stalin died in 1953, Lithuanian men and women were involved in the Partisan movement, called the Forest Brothers, waging guerilla warfare against the Soviets.

Relaxation of repression under Kruschev eliminated extreme Stalinist terror, allowed the return of many deportees (including my relative), and opened some foreign contact. Kruschev’s ouster in 1964 crushed much of the renewed Lithuanian nationalism, but people had seen the rest of the world through the crack in the door and western ideals kept seeping in. Kaunas became a hotbed of teen rock bands in the late ’60s, even though jeans and long hair were forbidden. The city mobilized after Kalanta’s protest suicide, and held unheard-of public marches.

Dissent kicked into high gear from 1974 to 1986. The Catholic Church publicly opposed the Soviet regime; human rights dissidents supported the Helsinki Accords and Lithuania churned out more underground publications per capita than any other part of the USSR. Of course, this landed many people in the gulags. But the time Gorbachev came into power in 1986, it was only a short time until the occupied countries took glasnost and perestroika much farther than he had intended. Instead of wanting to make a better Soviet Union, Lithuania worked toward independence in 1990.

Our afternoon trip was to IX Forto (Ninth Fort), which was originally intended as a Russian defense against invaders, but was abandoned by the Russians in their retreat during WWI and was subsequently used as a Lithuanian prison, a Soviet prison and eventually a Nazi prison and execution site for more than 5,000 of Kaunas’s Jews. The museum there commemorates those who were held there and those who died there. I found the name of my grandmother’s nephew, A. (Alfonsas) Bačiulis, on a listing of those Lithuanian army officers who had been held there before being exiled. The fort itself is a cold, wet, haunting place with dank cells and dark corridors. I felt deeply for those who were never able to escape its hold, and was grateful for the sunlight that greeted us at the end of the tour.

Back at the dorms, I finally got the laundry key and rushed to do two loads before meeting the rest of the group at at the Magnus Hotel for a drink and panoramic view of the city. Even after 40 minutes of drying, my clothes were still so wet that I used every available means of hanging them to dry around the room, including doors, chairs, desks, doorknobs and window handles. The people bringing the refrigerator up tomorrow will certainly get a full appreciation for my wardrobe tastes.

Next: A taste of village life