Vilnius............a dark place

1,658 miles GMT +2 Temp -2

Trakai Castle

The storm approaches

We arrived as per the timetable, put our luggage into a locker and took another local train out to Trakai, as we wanted to visit the castle, which is about 30 km outside of Vilnius. It's situated on an island and has had a very chequered history from its origin in the 14th century, going through several periods of additions, repair and reconstruction up to and including the 20th century. One of the curious things being that during WWII the Germans actually made repairs to it, bringing in skilled men from Germany to do the work. Probably under the illusion that they were going to be the new owners.

There was some snow in Vilnius, however the landscape became quickly more 'Baltic' and by the time I reached Trakai, it was totally Baltic, with a good 6 - 8 inches on snow. The lake surrounding the castle was completely frozen with a blanket of snow for good measure, but it's real fairytale scene. We'd only been there just over an hour when I decided to go up to the top of the wall to have a look at the view - a wall of black sky approaching like some horrible tsunami of snow, so we decided to withdraw back to Vilnius, as we didn't fancy being caught in it or being stuck in Trakai.

Back at Vilnius we book into our hotel (pub with bedrooms) and are offered a lunch of 'Verdarai' and 'Bigos'. Essentially a sausage stew, and the starter deep fried pigs innards - no laughing at least its not Shergar from Tesco.

Thankfully the snow has not followed us to Vilnius and we go to the 'Museum of Genocide Victims'. Lithuania as invaded by the Soviet Union in 1940, and following an ultimatum, became a Soviet Socialist Republic. Mass arrests and deportations followed, and the building's basement became a prison. In 1942 Germany invaded the country, the building then housed the Gestapo headquarters. Inscriptions on the cell walls from that era remain, and it was then that the previously large Jewish population of the city was decimated. The Soviets re-took the country in 1944 and from then until independence was re-established in 1991, the KGB used the building for offices, as a prison and as an interrogation centre. Over 1,000 prisoners were executed in the basement between 1944 and the early 1960s, about one third for resisting the occupation. The remains of 767 people shot between 1944-47 were found buried in mass graves at Tuskulenai between 1994-96, not far from the centre of the town. The graves of the later victims are still unknown. It is believed that there are several mass graves within a 30km radius of Vilnius yet to be discovered.



Physically being in the basement of that building was a challenge, seeing for myself the conditions human beings can inflict on other human beings. Tiny cells with sunken floors, filled with icy water, the prisoner's only way of avoiding the water to stand barefoot on an elevated metal disc of maybe 12 inches in diameter. Padded cells and straight jackets for those who dared to struggle physically with their captors. Seeing messages of defiance or of love scraped into the walls, reading testimonies of people who had survived, the bench where people sat awaiting execution, the bullet holes in the wall and floor that were made having passed through people whose only crime was to be faithful to their country and/or countrymen/women. The walls outside bear witness to the people that lost their lives in the building. I found the atmosphere in the basement of that building just so oppressive, I can't describe it, even after several hours.

The names of the victims

The three muses

 
Our next venue 'The TV Tower', which can't be missed as it stands over 1,000ft high, housing a TV and radio station. Like so many places in Vilnius and throughout Lithuania, it too has a story connected with Lithuania becoming an independent nation. On January 13th 1991, Russia attacked Vilnius and took control of the tower, killing 14 civilians and injuring hundreds more. The streets surrounding the tower have since been re-named after the 14 people who were killed on that night, and flowers and candles are still laid at the foot of the crosses at the base of the tower in their memories.

We spend the rest of the afternoon visiting churches and investigating old streets, until darkness tells us it was time to stop. We did find a beautiful sculpture above a theatre, the three muses, and tomorrow we'd like to find the less traumatic side of Vilnius.