Lithuania

This is the second part of a series of posts about our trip; see below to start at the beginning. The pictures for Lithuania are in this set.

After our layover in Copenhagen, we took a short flight to our ultimate destination: Vilnius, the capitol and largest city in Lithuania. Anya's parents met us there; they go there frequently and know their way around.

Lithuania and its neighbors Latvia and Estonia are collectively known as the Baltic Countries (they're on the Baltic Sea). Prior to 1990 they were in the Soviet Union, although their people maintain that beginning after WWII they were occupied by the Soviet Union and weren't willing members. After the collapse of the USSR, these three countries turned sharply westwards; they're now members of the EU, in the Schengen Zone (meaning you could drive from, say, Spain all the way to Estonia without having to show your passport), and will adopt the Euro for their currency in the next few years.

Vilnius' old town is beautiful, well-preserved, and thriving. It's the European Culture Capitol for 2009, meaning that it's seeing an influx of tourists - and deservedly so. Although it's a little too big to be called "cozy", it's definitely a comfortable, easy-going small city. It's filled with nice little cafés and bars, all serving good local beer and traditional Lithuanian beer snacks: fried dark bread with a light dusting of cheese (it's really good). There are plenty of beautiful old Catholic churches. The medieval architecture makes the city feel almost like an old Italian town, and the Lithuanian language - written in the Roman alphabet, not Cyrillic like Russian - looks & sounds a bit like Italian with the letter "s" added to the end of many words (in reality those languages are almost completely unrelated).

We also took a day trip to Trakai, a nearby town with a medieval castle/fortress built on an island in the middle of a lake. It was a scenic little place. We stopped at a traditional local pub for kibinai, little doughy pastry balls filled with various different meats, mushrooms, cabbage, or apples. Like elsewhere in northern Europe, vegetarians would have a tough time getting by in Lithuania: meat is the staple of every meal, albeit in much smaller portions than Americans are used to. (That's a good thing)

Being small and relatively out of the way, Vilnius probably isn't at the top of many Americans' vacation plans. But if Western Europe is a "been there, done that" proposition and you're looking to branch out, the Baltics would be a nice next step and a good primer before moving further east into the Russian-speaking world. That's where we were headed next.