Day 14 - Druskininkai

In the morning we checked the weather and it still looked pretty bleak. 70% chance of the rain in Vilnius, 60% in Kaunas. However the weather bug said it was 0% chance of rain in Druskininkai. So that was it. Dan had his quick morning run to the collector hill and picked up some bandeles on the way. After that we drove off to understand what the droves of elderly Israeli tourists arriving here in chartered planes come for.

It is about 126km southwest of Vilnius. The road was pretty scenic -tall wild flowers, pine and birch forests, and an occasional horse or cow sunbathing in a field. We stopped once and Dan got a bag of wild strawberries. Hurray! They are here.

When we arrived to Druskininkai, at first we were not sure if we already passed through town until we reached the Holy Virgin Mary Scapular Church. The word scapular did not sit well with me for some reason. So I looked it up later (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapular) but it does not seem to explain that the whole combination of words mean.

First we stopped at the tourist information office. They are here about every 1km. We got the directions for the sculpture park to go to afterwards and a mini In Your Pocket guide for Druskininkai. Rough Guide for Baltics is next to useless when it comes to the detailed information about smaller towns. Then we stopped at the local version of Svejais Bandeles. Theirs were 4 times the size and just as great tasting.

Finally we were ready to explore. Walked around the Druskonis lake and down the Ciurlionio

gatve to Liepu gatve. The old wooden houses are intermixed with occasional neo-classical buildings and Soviet cement uglinesses. The town had a thoroughly provincial feel to it and did not feel like much of the resort town, other than more plentiful than usual souvenir and jewelry shops. We stopped to take some pictures near the Russian Orthodox Church. Really tiny and pretty. I liked the frescos of the chubby baby angel heads sitting on the tiny dove bodies.

Next was the final highlight of town - Laives alley. (Sorry, skipped the museums) Their version of the shopping/walking alley had metal kiosk type shops, with the old wooden houses behind. Some were selling cheap plastic trinkets, label imitations, and mass quality amber jewelry. There were some futuristic looking Soviet era sanatories on the left and on the right.

We passed between them and walked out to Nemunas river. The area near the river where all the major sanatories were coming out to was well developed with good walking paths, occasional coffee kiosks, statues, and sitting nooks. We walked around a little and headed out to get to some of the out of town activities.

First we wanted to see Svendubre. We looked at the map from the guide we bought, it showed just the general direction of town. We drove until it started to look like the Byelorussian border was approaching and turned around. It would have been really helpful to have the real road map. Will remedy it when we are back in Vilnius.

Next, we followed excellent directions provided at the information office to get to Cesnulis Sculpture Park. It is a really beautiful park with lots of interesting areas. Pictures really tell a good story.



What was striking is the attention to detail and creativeness of the author. He carved an entire village including the different homes with people of different trades, the lake with a rain spewing snake monster, and a little covered hut with a pressure activated floor. Once Dan and Georgia got inside, dance music had started and the water snake started making water, and the carved figures on dancers inside the hut started dancing. There was also a dragon and St.George. Dragon had a proximity sensor on it. When people approached, it started making clicking noise, and light lit up in its mouth representing the flames. It was very cute and 70s like. At the end of the village there was a carved group of moonshiners making and testing their product.

After that we were off to the Gruto Parkas. Read the description on the link. It provides a pretty good idea on the feeling one gets after getting out of the park. On one hand there is excellent collection of propaganda, repression, and genocide (including that of green brothers) documentation, a full collection of Lenins, Stalins, and some other people from the major cities in Lithuania.


On the other hand, there are also statues of Marx and Engels (those theoretics), DOSAAF lottery bus where one could win real Soviet era momentos, shooting range bus, beautiful abstract color glass murals, where it is hard to make out what was going on, a working KVAS barrel and a carbonated water machine, the latter one for some reason had stuffed real bunny sitting on top, and restaurant waiters wearing pioneer scarfs. Now, add to it one of the biggest and complete playground I have ever seen, where seasaws were intermixed with the real machine guns, a mini zoo with animals in incredible quantities. Imagine a cage with no less than 100 guinea pigs in it fighting over a dandelion that you slip inside. Maybe there was a message behind it too? Incidentally one of the propaganda rooms, fully furnished with the rich selection of newspapers, projectors, photos, stories, busts, and such also was playing "Nu Pogodi" cartoon, the cult Tom and Jerry rip off that several generations of people in the entire country had grown up with. A hell of the message in that one.

The starting and finishing impression at the entrance to the museum really said it all: on the left there was real train car on which the people were taken to Siberia and tortured, on the right there was a fence in front of what we assumed to the front lawn of the millionnaire owner of the park with a real zebra grazing on it. Later we could also make out a camel, some rheas, and a kangaroo. We could only imagine that the hyppo is in the covered pool of the actual house.

I guess the park creator gathered anything and everything that was rapidly and randomly disposed of by the people in the country that was recently liberated and was seeking to find its identity. It included some real objects of oppression, and some objects that were brought there as a part of building the unified infrastructure and common base of consumer products - like the carbonated machine and quality heavy iron fence whose only fault was having a star on it. It is good that he preserved all of these things and even tried to make some sense out of them. And it was clear that not all of them make sense.

But in the end it was a good business decision as I imagine this is one of those requisite places that all the Lithuanian children must go to, and good number of adults too. At a whooping 20lt entry fee, the owner should be raking up enough to have those guinea pigs well fed. Compared to its counterpart, the museum of oppression in Riga, this one was interesting, entertaining, and multidimentional.

We drove off perplexed. As we approached Vilnius, we arranged to meet for dinner with Sasha, Vika, Klim and Lisa at the giant kibinai place right on the Trakai road. The place was really impressive. Georgia and Lisa had a blast in a little children's corner and running around the enormous restaurant. Kibinai were not stellar but it was good to sit down, relax and catch up. We finished off the catching up at our home, having stocked up on more beer and sweets.