Last time I left you, dear readers, we were padding through the soft moss in the forests of Druskinikai, but even before that moment, we had a forest experience of a very different kind in another famous Druskininai landmark: Gruto Parkas.

Gruto Parkas has gotten some bad press around the world, and has apparently even been dubbed by some as “Stalinworld” because of its function as a tree-lined display case for tossed away statues of the former Soviet Union. The outrage from and backlash to the park is easy to understand in the abstract: a rich and powerful Lithuanian used his fortune to acquire an impressive assortment of metal and stone statues of former Soviet icons (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and other local party nomenklatura), as well as art, kitsch, and mementos from an Empire that had a spectacular and unexpected sudden downfall in the world. The idea that objects from the Soviet Union are worth revering is horrifying to some, especially the many who suffered from the forced annexation, brutal exiles, and cultural repression, but for those who have been to the park, there can be more to the park than the outcry of righteous indignation belies.

There is no place in the world for the exaltation of a government or its agents who kill millions of its/their own citizens. Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Pinochet, Mao and others fall into this class of murderers, but this does not mean that acknowledging the history surrounding them is the same as glorifying their regimes. Idolizing and romanticizing such figures is sick and sad, but this doesn’t make their impact on the world easy to dismiss. Such is history, it can often be an ugly reminder of the evil that all humans possess (as well as the laziness of many to intervene on behalf of the weak), but that does not mean that such history does not have a place in the minds of individuals, especially when there are many in Lithuania who are still remember many of the statues and mementos now on display as being a part of their lives.

I know that as an outsider to this world I tread on very controversial ground when making value judgments about the worth of things in a country still steeped in transformation, but, to me, the worth of this park was not found in the cold granite or the hallow bronze eyes of Stalin, Lenin, Marx, or Engels staring back at me from across time, but in the interactions that people had with reminders of their lives back when these things were part of an understood political system within which they built their lives.

To hear many Lithuanians reflect on the Soviet experience, every Lithuanian from the 1800s onward was born with a nationalist pride burning in their hearts so strongly that no one could lay their heads down to sleep without drawing up plans of attack on any and all governments who had destroyed their pure way of life, but, of course, this was not the case. Often, many people in the Soviet Union made meaning in their lives within the system that existed, and the artifacts resting in the leafy park were sometimes a part of those lives.

Even with the illegal annexation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union and the later crumbling of the political system before the very eyes of its citizens, people laughed, loved, cried, had hopes, dreams, and deeply rich experiences that gave them a sense of meaning in this crazy world. (oh yes, Alexei Yurchak, this is for you).

So, yes, there is an enormous, ugly statue of Stalin, who was an nasty figure that deserves to be known by his worst deeds, but no one in Gruto parkas has placed his statue under a giant red heart pledging blind fidelity to the murderous way he ran his political regime. There is merely a statue that draws memories out of the hearts of those who had known it in “real” life, and interest from those who did not grow up with it to see what it meant to those who knew it.

And yes, there is a statue of 4 communists with one pumping his fist in enthusiasm for communist ideology, but no one is standing next to it passing out flyers of why we should bring the Soviet Union back. Instead, at this statue I got to see a small smile play across the lips of my husband as he remembered that this statue stood not far from the train station in Kaunas, and he and he friends would often use it as their meeting place before heading off to some other boyish activity of youth.

And indeed, that are many statues of dour looking Lenins, but no one had framed them in such a way that schoolchildren would, upon seeing them, suddenly want to unite the proletarians of the world and throw off the chains of capitalism. Instead, I got to watch these starry-eyed Lenins stare into a future that no longer exists while Rokas’ parents explained to Gabrielius how one of these statues had once stood in front of the city building down the street from our apartment on Laisves Aleja.

To me, the most important thing in Gruto Parkas was not watching the statues, but watching the watchers watch the statues. For me, it was the closest thing that I could get to touching my husband’s childhood, which happened behind an iron curtain 3,000 miles away from everything I knew about the world — and for that small gift, I will be eternally grateful to Gruto Parkas.

August 14^th

Last time I left you, dear readers, we were hard at work in Kaunas, but over the weekend (punctuated by a spooky Friday the 13^th beginning) we left sweltering Kaunas for even hotter Druskininkai in order to indulge in the miniest of a mini-vacations—a true atostogėlės.

Druskinikai is a small city, a meistelis, in the South of Lithuania located only kilometers from the Belarussian boarder. Under the USSR, the town was a famous destination for sanatoria-seeking Soviets, and since the reclamation of independence, it has attempted to redeem its status as a spa town—though it retains a distinctly small town, industrial feel. However, Druskinikai is also famous for its sunshine bedecked pine forests, which offer not only magical strolls beneath the whispering pines, but also fields of berries and mushrooms ripe for the picking.

Each time we would drive by a forest, Rokas’ mother would peer longingly out the window and chatter away about the many different mushrooms she could see just waiting for us to come and claim them. Finally, (though it took us a while to get it through out thick heads) we pulled off the road at one of the unmarked dirt roads leading into the forest and drove until we found a small patch of grass that was flat enough for us to use as a makeshift parking spot.

As soon as we had parked, Rokas’ mom kicked off her shoes and practically leapt from the car in anticipation of all the goodies that she was sure to find in the forest. Rokas and I trailed along behind her, pointing at various mushrooms sprouting from the ground (often wondering aloud if they we poisonous or not), but Rokas mom informed us that the mushrooms we had found were never good enough to pick and keep.

Rokas’ father was also hot on the trail of useable mushrooms, and after only a short time we all realized that we had spread out so far that none of us could see the car anymore. We were all kind of sure that the car was somewhere in the vicinity to our left, but after a while we all started to grow anxious because our leftward drift had gotten us no closer to the car. Still, even though we were growing concerned that we might actually be lost, it was really hard to tear ourselves away from the soft mossy carpet and the pockets of sunshine gleaming through the pine canopy to seek out the missing car. Eventually, (because we actually had not actually ventured too far from the car) we found our way back with not only mushrooms, but also a handful of red bilberries (also known as whortle and cow berries) richly red, but tart from being underripe.

As we packed our fresh and free forest mushrooms into the car, Rokas said, “I can see why people like this. It’s addicting.”

The next night, we cooked up our found morsels and enjoyed every bite.

* But no one should eat anything from the forest floor unless they know what they are doing – or are with someone who does.

Last time I left you, dear readers, I was musing over things labeled “Americas Best,” but the best that American truly has to offer (in my biased opinion) ended up on my doorstep last week when my husband arrived from the states. Pagaliau as they say in Lithuanian—finally.

Dinner with the Fam.

It is hard for me to believe, but I spent 50 days alone before Rokas actually arrived in Lithuania. That’s almost 2 months! So, riding the trolleybus home from school that day, I tried to assess exactly what I was feeling, and I realized I wasn’t really “feeling” anything. I wasn’t feeling excitement, or nerves, or giddiness, it was that calm feeling of finally being safe again—the whole reason I got married in the first place.  While I know marriage isn’t for everyone, for me there is nothing more amazing than the feeling of being able to look to my side and know for certain that I have someone to go through life with, especially because life in Lithuania is no cakewalk to begin with. And although I am enormously proud of myself for all that I accomplished in Lithuania (for the second summer in a row, I might add), fixing the toilet, weathering severe storms, and navigating train schedules are all tasks that I think are much better suited to two people.

However, as my mother likes to say, in our lives there is “never a dull moment,” and my sentimental reverie was quickly interrupted because—in true Rokas form—the moment he got off the plane we had to scurry to an event. It seems that it doesn’t matter what country we are in, we’re always schmoozing.

Tag team business: hard at work.

August 10, 2010

The last time I left you, dear readers, it was storming in Lithuania, but worry not, things have been much calmer here for the past week. However, I have been very sick, and therefore not too keen on blogging (or doing anything else for that matter).

Still, I have discovered something very important for those in search of America’s best popcorn: it is here in Lithuania– or more accurately, in Russia. So, I guess in addition to having the world’s largest supply of oil, Russia has also cornered the market on America’s best popcorn.

Yes, Russia apparently has all of America's best popcorn

Now, lest you worry that the very country that invented microwave popcorn is losing control of its market shares, I am happy to report that I have tasted America’s best popcorn, and it is, in fact, no one’s best popcorn. Nonetheless, for all you health conscious folks out there, the good news is that even though this popcorn has no taste, it also has no ‘Holesterol.’

HOLESTEROL FREE!

So, I am happy to take orders and bring home the popcorn because, for whatever reason, we don’t seem to have our own best popcorn in the US…

But, I do have to say, I think the Russians did actually make it to the moon first…

August 8, 2010

Last time I left you, dear readers, I was marveling at my mother-in-law, but last night I was forced to marvel at a very different kind of mother: Mother Nature.

Saturday night, at just a few minutes before 3am, I found myself sitting upright in my bed with a feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Before I was even fully awake, I found my feet carrying me out of my bedroom and into the front hall where I stood watching a dark sky intermittently illuminated by a thousand flashes of light. I heard the wind howling through the cracks around the edges of the windows, and I hoped that the extra money we’d spent for German windows was going to be worth it.

A sharp crack of thunder forced me from my reverie, and I reached out for my purse and headed into the bathroom—the only room in the apartment without windows. I leaned against the wall, thinking of what to do next, and then looked at my purse. I put it down on the bathroom counter with a little laugh. I was fully awake now, so I could acknowledge that while my Red Cross disaster training had served me well, I was in the wrong country for my instincts to pay off. Even if there was a tornado, straight line winds, or flooding, I wouldn’t need my purse or wallet to prove that I lived at an address in the disaster-stricken area and was thus eligible for Red Cross assistance (not to mention, the address on my ID was in Maryland). There wasn’t going to be Red Cross assistance; there wasn’t going to be a mobilized response team of any kind in Lithuania.  In fact, just last week the mayor of Kaunas was actually accused of illegally “selling” the Red Cross hospital in an attempt to line his own pockets, so while it was probably good to shelter in place with some form of ID, I was all too aware that disaster in Lithuania was going to be an “every woman for herself” kind of affair.

Standing in the dark bathroom, I realized that I was safe for the moment, but if I was going to spend more time hanging out in the pitch black bathroom then there were a few more things I would need.

I had a flashlight in my purse that I bought last summer to assist me in navigating the unlit apartment stairway, but in those confused morning moments, I couldn’t remember if I had changed the batteries before coming back to Lithuania or if I had just thought about doing it.

I decided to make one last dash to collect all the things I would need, all the while hoping that the winds wouldn’t pick up enough speed to start hurling trees (or anything that wasn’t nailed down) through my windows.

Ready. Set. Go.

Terrified to get too close to the windows made brilliant with sheets of lightening, I snaked along the living room wall into my bedroom, ungracefully leapt to my bedside table to retrieve my phone, and then yanked the comforter off the corner of the bed furthest from the windows. I made it back into the living room and pulled the power cord out of my computer just as a piercing white flash and a sensational rumble of thunder killed all power along Laisves Aleja.

I tried to reassure myself that when the Soviets built my apartment building they were surely acquainted with the kind of elements that it needed to endure, but that was 40 years ago. I sent up a silent prayer that concrete was a sturdy material when faced with swirling squalls and grabbed the few remaining items needed to complete my ad hoc disaster supply kit: extra batteries, water, pillows, and my stuffed duck.

I scurried back in the bathroom.

Outside, the wind was bending the trees westerly and the driving rain was following suit. Each liquid drop struck the window with the clatter of a pebble being heaved aloft. Enough pebbles would certainly break the thin pane…

I heaved the bathroom door shut, but it didn’t take long for the air in the darkened, unventilated bathroom to become sweltering. I quickly realized that I was going to have to make a choice between being impaled by flying debris or sweating to death in the stuffy bathroom.

Lightening over Lithuania

Through the tiny crack around the bathroom door, I could see nonstop flashes of lightening, so I figured that the closed door really didn’t offer me much protection from objects made deadly by 100 mile per hour winds anyway, and I gingerly opened the door.

After a few moments, I decided that I would rather die on the floor of the hallway than stay in there for another minute. So, I dragged my blanket into the entry way and made it into a little nest against the interior concrete wall. I sat there curled up in the front hall for about an hour– although “sat” is an overstatement, as I was constantly getting up to watch the sheets of rain cascading down until I was frightened back into my spot again by the white-green-red-purple flashes of the most intense and unrelenting lightening I had ever seen.

Around 4:30am, the deep dark of night shifted almost imperceptibly into the light blue promise of a new dawn, and while it was still pouring rain, it was clear that the worst had passed. I dozed for a half an hour more in my place until the hardwood floor proved to be too unforgiving on my back, and I crawled back in bed.

I tried to will myself into staying partially awake so that I could sense any change in the pitter patter of the receding storm, but I couldn’t endure. For the first time since I had come back to Kaunas, Laives Aleja was actually quiet and eventually I fell asleep.  

The next morning my mother in law told me that in 50 years she had never seen such a storm in Lithuania. Neither had I.

2 people were killed and 2 were injured, and hundreds of trees were toppled into hundreds of cars, but save for a few ruffled feathers, most of us survived no worse for the wear.

Thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those who didn’t survive. May it be another 50 years before Lithuania sees a squall like that again. No. Make that 100 .

For more information on being disaster ready, visit www.redcross.org.

Me and Mama, best mother-in-law ever.

Beginning last summer—and maybe even longer ago than that—there has been a sinkhole in the entry drive to our apartment courtyard growing larger with every drop of rain. I remember that last summer I was absentmindedly skirting around the hole (it sits in exactly the center of the small driveway), but this summer I have taken to practically hugging the walls as I jump over it for fear that the driveway might just fall away entirely at any moment. (So far it hasn’t).

My mother-in-law is equally nonplussed over this neglect, but she doesn’t live here (it’s me and my husband’s place). Still, that hasn’t stopped me from badgering her as to why none of the other residents have taken matters into their own hands (after all, they live here full time). While wringing her hands, my mother-in-law always says she doesn’t understand why, but for some reason the hole has remained (she manages the property when we aren’t here).

In some ways, this situation of apathy is not unique to this hole; instead it is emblematic of a far larger social phenomenon across the post-Soviet states. In a country where privatization has become the rallying cry, spaces for the common good have fallen into disrepair. If the state doesn’t exist to take care of the people then the people don’t exist to take care of the state. 

Now, there is a good likelihood that some people have complained and the city government still did nothing, but my mother-in-law found out that the bigger problem might be that the bureaucratic protocol exists in relative secret. Although my mother in law has been calling the savivaldybe (municipality) for the past few weeks—or did she say months— asking that they take care of the growing hazard before it swallows up a small child or an inattentive pet, nothing has been done.

However, on Tuesday afternoon, I rounded the corner after what was a particularly draining day of classes and meetings and found that there was firm ground beneath me where once stood the child-swallowing hole. I couldn’t believe it. Though inexpertly done, the sinkhole had been packed with dirt and rocks until it was so full that it created a little mound of its own, offering a different kind of hazard. Nonetheless, I couldn’t believe it—and I knew that the person who had made this happen was my mother-in-law.

Once there was a hole the size of a manhole cover that no one fixed for a year

I smiled as I gingerly tapped at the packed dirt with the toe of my flip flop. It seemed solid, but I didn’t dare put my weight on it (just in case). It certainly wasn’t a permanent fixture (in fact, I wondered how long it would take the pounding Lithuanian rains to erode the newly packed dirt from inside the sinkhole), but for the moment, the potential loss of limb, pooch, or car tire had been averted.

I scampered up to my apartment long enough to drop my books and grab my camera. I knew my mother-in-law would want to see her handiwork, and I laughed out loud when I came back down into the courtyard just as two other girls rounded the corner.  The site of dirt caused one of the girls to let out a loud “O-ho,” and both paused over the hole in a kind of reverential awe, as though someone they knew had just been buried there. The chattered on in Lithuanian that I could not understand, and then they took out their cell phones and snapped several photos of the driveway formerly known as the sinkhole.

“Mama did good,” I thought to myself as I waited to take pictures of my own. It was amazing for me to see that other people stopping in their tracks after a year of nothing finally turned into something. I wondered if they realized they had the power to make the same thing happen if they wanted to…

as you can see, the whole street needs some work...

As I talked to my mother in law that night, she explained to me that in two months of calling no one had ever told her that she had to go to the office and fill out an official request form. After someone finally clued her in on that missing link, it didn’t take her but 24 hours to not only fill out a request, but demand that something be done about it immediately (they said everyone was on vacation and they couldn’t get to it until next month), so that no small child should suddenly vanish into the hole and never to be heard from again.

And the rest, as they say, is history. The hole now has dirt, and supposedly it’s slated for real repair in a month.  

So, I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes things do get done here, but the most important moral of the story is don’t mess with my mother-in-law. She grew up under Soviet inefficiency, and has suffered even more under democratic transition. She has a heart condition and lives on 2/3rds of a kidney, so she knows that life is too short to put things off. If she wants to get something done then you better stand back and let her do it. She truly is democracy in action.

I can’t think of a better role model for my nephews—or me.

August 1, 2010

Last time I left you, dear readers, I was lamenting over the small stuff, but sometimes it takes the big stuff to remind you that the small stuff isn’t all that important.

Overlooking Laisves Aleja on a Quieter Day

Last night, about 2 am, I was waked up by the usual drunken screaming on Laisves aleja as the bars closed and people lingered in the streets not wanting (or not able) to go home. I already knew that I was going to be in for this nonsense because I had to struggle with the same late night debauchery last summer, but I am still not used to it. I try to ignore it, play music, sleep with ear plugs, and keep my windows shut (which is torture in a country that doesn’t have air conditioning), but I am still awakened like clockwork every night as the sound of drunken Lithuanians floats on the summer air (which often sounds like the off pitch singing of partisan songs, or lots of yelling in monosyllabic grunts).

On most nights, I generally leave the drunks to themselves unless it sounds like someone is really in trouble or there is a woman’s voice in the mix (Lithuanian society is still working on “gender equality,” shall we say, and even my own father-in-law says that girls on the street after dark at to blame for what happens to them… sad, I know). However, last night was different. After about 20 minutes of listening to a very aggressive altercation, I heard a woman scream pabaik (stop).  That did it. There was something in the pitch and tone of her voice that indicated that this was not just a case of some loudmouth drunks who would eventually wander home. Someone was in trouble.

I hauled open my balcony door and stepped outside into the cool summer air. I could hear loud shouting by a male voice punctuated by the woman’s shrill pleas. I didn’t know what to do, but felt relieved to see a series of taxis sitting right by the sidewalk with their “on-duty” lights lit. From the 4^th floor, I couldn’t see anything, but the drivers could likely see everything from where they sat, and intervene if necessary.

I could not have been more wrong.

In the few seconds that it took me to note the presence of the cabs, a large baldheaded guy in a white tee-shirt hauled some young, thinner guy into my view by his neck, and then he hit him square in the face. A group of about 5 people then came into view, with a particularly courageous young woman attempting to intervene on behalf of the young man. Her screams to stop and her attempts to wrestle the guy away were met with a slam to her head and a heave that pushed her backwards onto the sidewalk. The larger guy was still punching and hauling the thinner guy around by his neck while the girl screamed to leave him alone, and two more people, a guy and a blond girl, stepped in screaming for him to stop as well. The girl was punched in the face, and the guy got kicked.

If you’ve never seen a fight—as I never had before—it is a bizarre site. It is an awkward mass of bodies that clearly don’t fit together squirming and wriggling about. Every time someone lands a punch, it looks like it is in slow motion, and it takes the brain a second to process that such an ungainly act could cause such damage, but in a split second, it’s over.

As I stood watching this—for what was probably about 90 seconds—it was clear to me that no one on the ground was going to help these people. I panicked. I was going to have to call the police. Immediately, I found my phone and realized that I had no idea what number to call. I stepped back out on the balcony, and the melee was still progressing as the girls screamed and tried to stop the fight, and the baldheaded guys pushed and hit in aggression.

 “Who do I call? Who do I call?” ran through my head, and I thought, “Rokas.” He has a Lithuanian phone in the US and will know who to call. If not, I could search for the number for Kaunas police on the internet.

I started my computer, and waited for it to boot up. As I was waiting, I went back onto my balcony once more. There wasn’t a single other light on in any of the other apartments. I peered below and above me to see if there was anyone else who had stepped out into their balcony—there wasn’t. The taxi drivers just sat in their taxis doing nothing. As I stood there, phone in hand, no number to call, the three aggressors apparently had enough and left the battered boy, two girls, and three bystanders from the group standing in the pools of lamplight. The guys hustled off into the darkness apparently unaware that just a few floors above them I was standing there waiting to call the police. But I was too late.

I was mad at myself for hesitating, angry at the taxi drivers for doing nothing, and more angry that, yet again, the city of Kaunas did nothing to keep its residents safe. In the past 4 years that we have owned this apartment, I have never seen a cop show up here after dark. The most that I ever saw a cop do was pull people over for tickets on the A1 where they knew they would be able to muster a bribe from the driver to let the official ticket go. Oh sure, the government put in streetlights and (supposedly) put in video cameras, but who was watching those cameras now when people needed help the most? The greatest irony? All of this was unfolding in front of the teismas building: the city court. Rule of law? Not here.

As I stood watching the victims scatter through the streets in fear, I realized that had it been me on that street, coming home for whatever reason after dark, no one would have come to my rescue. The most I could hope for was a bumbling tourist who didn’t even know who to call.

For the first time ever, I realized that I am not safe.

Be aware, and be alert. Those coming to Kaunas, Lithuania, do not be out after dark.

July 31, 2010

Last time I left you, dear readers, I was being all sour grapes about the self-expression of other people, but, as they say in Lithuania, tegul buna, let it be.

Me at school!

So, on Friday, I decided to be sour grapes about something else. (I can’t just go around enjoying myself now can I?) Friday morning I got a little petulant in my Lithuanian class, even though I knew I should just sit back and shut up, but I have never been the “sit back and shut up” type, so when the teacher assigned us the 50^th task of “busy work” without an explanation of what we were doing and—most importantly—why we were doing it, I sauntered up to her (while everyone else quietly tried to sort it out) and said in really poor Lithuanian that it might help to explain what grammatical tasks we were supposed to be exercising and, most importantly, why we should care about doing them.

The teacher, a very nice lady who I call the hippie of language learning (our first day we started off by writing poems), hopped to it, but clearly didn’t get the bigger picture of what I was getting at. Instead of realizing that maybe on the 4^th day of class it might be time to explain something or provide us context for the lessons she was assigning (what I like to think of as teaching) she spent the next 10 minutes explaining directly to me what reflexive verbs were as though I was hard of hearing. I hung my head. Not what I meant at all. Now, I know, I sound like a real pain in the ass, but this is my third language course in Lithuania, and all of them can be summarized by an anecdote from my language class last summer when a rather unpleasant teacher snapped at one of the other students who was struggling with an exercise and said, “J—-, I don’t have time to teach you this. You should learn it at home.”

Ahhh, yes, learning at home is exactly what education is all about. Now, don’t get me wrong, this woman teaching our course this year is quiet lovely, and were we meeting for coffee I would find her perfectly sensational to talk to, but I was sort of hoping we would at least get some kind of, oh, I don’t know, class. I also know that there is an enormous amount of boring tasks involved in learning a language, and that most of the time the only way to learn one is to sit down and memorize all the requisite endings, tenses, and cases, but I have found that it’s like feast or famine here in Lithuania: 4 weeks of boring grammar or 4 weeks or dreamy poems and listening to stories from the teacher’s life. If there was only some way to combine the two, that would be one amazing class… but thus far, no such luck.

Still, one can’t be too hard on a system still pulling out of 50 years of Soviet methods, and just as a dear old friend once taught me, “you can learn something from any situation.” So, giving credit where credit is due, my classes here have taught me an enormous amount—not about the language, but about being a teacher, and understanding that when my students back home in Indiana take the time to provide me with feedback, I should listen to it because it can only make me a better teacher.

July 29. 2010

Last time I left you, dear readers, I was musing over coming “home” to Kaunas.

I don’t know what it is about this little town, but there is something here that makes it familiar and safe, and so I lay claim to it as somehow being “mine” even though I am not actually from here. Maybe it’s because I married into a family with roots here, and one of the wonderful gifts of marriage is that my husband’s world also becomes mine. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not perfect, and there are definitely some parts of this little world that I would like to give back, (Rokas’ sister comes to mind right now), but it’s like I told my parents when we got married, “you’re not losing a daughter, you’re gaining a country.”

Christine and Rokas at The White Swan in Kaunas, Lithuania, Winter 2007

So, why is it that today that I got really steamed today while listening two American girls chitter on about the tattoos they got of the Lithuanian-American community symbol? They are at least a “little” Lithuanian by ancestry (I guess), but while listening to them giggling and mocking some other poor schmuck who got a far inferior rendition of their tattoo,  it was all I could do to stop myself from saying, “you know that getting a tattoo doesn’t actually make you Lithuanian, right?”

Let's all get one.

You’ll be happy to hear, dear readers, that I did refrain from saying that (though there’s always tomorrow), but I did snicker to myself when one of the girls remarked that she was happy that her Lithuanian relatives seemed to be positive about her tattoo because she was worried they wouldn’t like it, to which the other girl noted that, ‘of cooooourse, they thought it was cool because it was something they themselves would neeeeeeever do.’ What was hanging in mid-air after this enthusiastically produced observation was that these people would never have to endure hours of torture to produce a Vytis on their wrist “because they are actually Lithuanian and don’t need to get a tattoo to prove it….”

Hey, they (almost) said it, not me….

But, I know, let’s stop right there: this conversation about righteous belonging is the slippery slope toward exclusion, ethnocentrism, racism, and even genocide, so I should plant my feet firmly at that top of the hill and say, “hey, kids, you can be whoever you want to be!” People get all kinds of tattoos for all kinds of reasons.

And, hey! Wasn’t I the one only two weeks ago saying that Lithuanians should expand their understanding of what it means to be a Lithuanian?  

Yes. That was me.

So what gives?

For me, an admitted “outsider,” these kinds of outward displays are akin to the ladies in “Lithuanian” restaurants who wear “traditional dress” in places where tourists frequent. It’s an invented tradition of something that displays a superficial snapshot of “being” something, but thinking about such symbols doesn’t go much deeper than that. I guess the best analogy for me is that it feels kind of like playing house…

But I digress.

Perhaps it would be useful to provide a little context to my negativity, no?

To make a long story short (I know, too late), you may remember a few weeks ago that I posted an ironically timed post asking ‘where are all the Americans are in Vilnius?’ Apparently, they weren’t in Vilnius because they were all here in Kaunas.

Yes. I have been overrun by little J crew boat shoes and cotton sun dresses, as well as all the “likes,” “you knows,” “totallys,” and “I drank way too much last nights” that I can handle thanks to a brand new program that throws money at ancestral returnees who want a state-sponsored vacation to Lithuania.

Now, I was a Holocaust scholar in my previous academic life (and the scholastic gods seem to be pushing me back that way again), so I know that the second generation of migrants/immigrants/survivors of almost any minority/migrant community is always way more interested in the reclamation of their historical belonging than those closer to it, but it just all seems so, I don’t know, “heritage tourism-y.”

…But maybe I am just bitter because I didn’t think of the tattoo idea first….

July 26, 2010

Last time I left you, dear readers, I was still hanging my hat in Vilnius, but now, at long last, I am back in Kaunas.

A storm rolls in over Kaunas

I confused a number of people on Facebook when I changed my status to say “I am home” because everyone thought that by “home” I meant DC (everyone knew better than to think I meant Bloomington), but when in Lithuania, home is Kaunas.

There has always been a (sometimes not-so) gentle rivalry between Vilnius and Kaunas, as both cities claim to have the most beautiful women, the best basketball team, and the “truest” Lithuanian spirit, but if you ask me (although no one does), I think they are both quintessentially Lithuanian. One prides itself on being diverse, political, and cosmopolitan, while the other relishes the familiar, the practical, and the down-to-earth. I think that Kaunas tends to come out on the losing end of thedebate because it is smaller (and some say retains more of its Soviet character), but in the end, they are both two sides of the same coin.

Old Town Kaunas

Kaunas had its most recent rise to fame as the interwar capital (1918-1939) when Poland occupied the capital city of Vilnius (Vilnius has always had a large Polish-speaking population), and the Lithuanian government had a new country to govern and nowhere to go. Subsequently, the prezidentura and parliament were set up in Kaunas (not far from our apartment actually), but eventually Poland had to give Kaunas back (that’s what you get for being greedy), and Vilnius was restored to its formal capital city status leaving Kaunas behind.

In 1991, when Lithuania secured its independence from the USSR, there was some concern that the post-Soviet carve-up would result in Vilnius being annexed by Poland again (or at least its sliver of Polish speakers), but Poland is so huge even without Vilnius that it eventually acquiesced and promised not to lay claim to the region. Still, tensions between the polish speaking minority in the South and the Lithuanian speaking majority in Vilnius remain, as the Poles have been demanding more and more cultural autonomy for their region (and often do well in elections electing Polish candidates to political office, much to the chagrin of many Lithuanians).  

But, since Vilnius remained part of Lithuania in its independent form, Kaunas never had to step in as a capital city again and has been the sort of “little brother” to Vilnius ever since. Still, as I said in my Lithuanian class this morning, I can’t remember my life without Kaunas being in it, and being here is beyond compare. It’s not always easy (I think there are more potholes, graffiti, and neglected buildings here now than there were in 2003 when I first came), but watching my mother in law making pickles in her small kitchen, my father in law sitting at his desk drawing his cartoons, my nephews playing chess at my in-laws country cottage, or the sign above the city hall tick off one more year marking the age of the city (we’re now up to 602), I know I’ve come home.  

Me with mama's pickles!