Lithuania

The first thing we noticed on entering Lithuania was that the roads had gone back to the surprisingly high standard which they were in Estonia - in contrast to those of Latvia, which were most pretty awful.  Where did the money go, we wonder?

We went to the Hill of Crosses

Lithuania is a mainly Catholic country (unlike the other two Baltic countries which are Lutheran protesant, or in the case of Latvia, mainly nothing!).  This place is important to the nation and was started in the 1830s after oppression by Czarist Russia.  They were all 'hacked down' by the Soviets in 1960, 'bulldozed' in 1973 and again in 1975, but they kept coming back.  In fact it continues to grow, mainly with the many cheap crosses sold at the site, and now hung in 10s of thousands on the larger crosses - this last aspect being, in our view, somewhat tacky, and taking away some of what the place is really about.

We have seen so many of these now that we don't even comment any more!

Kaunas is Lithuania's second city, with many churches - with the religions (mainly different 'branches' of Christianity!) using them as the countries fortunes have changed over the centuries. The cathedral - all nicely up-together.  This next is St John's - it illustrates how much there is to do in a country where religion has been subjugated for so much of recent history

Vilnius is a beautiful city, with very many lovely buildings and open parks and squares.  This is the cathedral - it was going to be used by the Soviets as a truck garage, but eventually they did allow it to be used as an art gallery

Our guide book lists 14 other churches - all with a square kilometre.  We looked in a couple - if you want OTT try a baroque church building subsequently taken over by the eastern orthodox church

Zervygos - where time has stood still for 100 years:

Well OK, but while water is still drawn from the well (we saw it being done), this house had some definate 21st century paint, there is mobile phone coverage, and to our considerable surprise, we saw an articulated lorry driving along the single track unsurfaced (but metalled) road!

A few miles away is Druskininkai - a spa town which was very prosperous pre 1990, being popular with the better off Russians, Belaurussians and Poles.  Well we knew the bit about all being equal was c**p, didn't we?!