Home, Sweet, Home

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.

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.

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.  

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