Balderdash

Friday, August 15, 2008

Baltics trip
Day 6 - 21st May - Hill of Crosses, Siauliai, Lithuania (Part 1)

We took a morning train from Klaipeda to our last stop in Lithuania - Siauliai.

HWMNBN thought the train conductor looked like Boris Karloff.

I think this was the first train I'd sat on where the carriage door was opaque - you couldn't look in. It was definitely the first train I'd been on where the conductor sold refreshments.

Communist-looking block, with the signs of Capitalism on the ground floor

We went into one supermarket, where we found:

5L kegs of beer

HWMNBN miming a drink from a 5L keg of beer

Really disgusting picture you don't want to see (something that afflicted me for the rest of the trip)

Siauliai Kolegija

St Peter and Paul's Church

Cat Museum, on map on wall of tourist information centre

The smart way people, without using a single word, advertise opening times in the Baltics. Must be because they have 3 languages there, all of which are not spoken by many people.

We then took a taxi to the Hill of Crosses, a famous pilgrimage site. We saw a lot of rapeseed along the way.

HWMNBN and I with our crosses:
"Certum est, quia impossibile est - Tertullian"
"Deo solus judiciaire mea - [nw.t] 21-May-2008
LODG 2015 nw.t KJK gssq NWY"

[Ed: "Deo solus judiciaire mea" has 0 results on Google]

We suspected the cross merchants just dug up old crosses and recycled them - no one would know, anyway, especially not the tourists whose crosses were reused.

Approach to the Hill

1993 memorial, presumably in honour of Papa

Crosses that didn't make it onto the hill

"No begging". We did see some women begging there, sign notwithstanding. They hid in a part of the hill invisible from ground level, though - probably to avoid the authorities

A mirage in the horizon

The biggest cross is Papa's. For some reason they didn't make it out of metal and mount it on top of the hill - that would have been really impressive (Franklin notwithstanding)