Vilniuje su Justinu

After the weekend near the coast, the next day (Monday morning), I took a train to Vilnius, where Justinas would be. In my nearly 3 months there, I still had not gone. I went to Gediminas castle, Trakai castle, the cathedral, other Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches, and just walked around in general. I think the most interesting little find was that there was a tiny neighborhood called across the river which had it's own constitution. On the bridges to get to this neighborhood (becuase to do so, you needed to cross the river), they were tons of locks with engravings. They were put on by couples who were married to symbolize their commitment. Unfortunately though, the pictures did not get transferred to my flash drive, but somehow I have the videos. So, you will not get to see very much. There are 2 pictures that Justinas took and 3 videos, one video which was a mistake but I posted it so that you could have one more thing to see.

Midievel armor at Gediminas castle. Really the castle is more like a fortress. It is not very impressive when comparing it to German castles of Bavaria, but it has an interesting history. One time the ruler Gediminas had a dream, and a wolf spoke to him saying that he should build this castle on the hill where the castle is currently. This place, the wolf said, would become a very prosperous city in all of Europe. So of course he did, and now we have Vilnius.

This was at Trakai castle. I have no pictures of the castle, but you can see a wall. The castle was situated on an island in the middle of a lake. At one point it was destroyed by Russians and locals used the bricks for their private uses, but now is has been completely restored. I did a little practice using a old bow and arrow. I hit the target, which was big, but I think if I ever hunt for something living and moving, I better practice a lot more. To my defense though, there was not even a sight to line up to the target.

So this is an outlook from Gediminas castle of Vilnius. The larger river you see is not the river you need to cross to get to that special "across-the-river" community. That river is much smaller. I tried zooming in on a green-roofed Russian Orthodox church I would visit later on, but it did not focus very well.

Here is a small, but very famous chapel with the picture Merciful Mary as its main thing that brings tons of people. I was talking with a Polish person in Spain (you'll understand why later why I say Spain) who said that Polish people consider themselves to have 2 very important pictures of Mary. One in a Polish city, and the other in Vilnius, which actually was owned by Poland for some time. In fact, when I went to the chapel, a mass, which had to have been in Polish, began. It was for a small Polish parish group, I presume, that was visiting. As you can see by the video, the place is rather small. It is actually located directly above the street in a bridge/arch. The chapel is called Dawn's gate, which was part of the gates and wall that used to surround old Vilnius. As far as I rememeber, this is the last one standing.

And finally, this was the 3-second, accidental film. It shows wild mushrooms and wild strawberries for sale in the market in Vilnius.