Milk Bars, Street Festivals, & Offensive Smiles

Memorial to a chid soldier, which is weird because Poland
never had child soldiers....

My original plan was to just pass through Poland on my way to the Baltics, but I was so impressed by Gdansk that I wanted to explore the country just a bit further. I decided that Warsaw was my best bet since Krakow was a bit too far south if I still wanted to head to Lithuania. Most of the people that I've run into during my travels have more-or-less panned Warsaw saying that it's fake and superficial, but it was 90% destroyed in World War II... so I think that's kind of brutal stance to take. The city did it's best to re-create what had been before the War and I think that's completely justified. Either way, Warsaw is beautiful and filled with an interesting mix of history, memorials, oddly shaped malls, and street art.

Old town Warsaw

Despite the plethora of history, my biggest cultural experience was eating at a "milk bar." I do always love when you can justify eating a whole load of fat and carbs by framing it as a "cultural experience," and this was just that. Now back in the Polish communist days (1945-1989), the government sponsored restaurants that served very basic and cheap foods so that poor workers could afford a meal out. These restaurants served whatever they could create from flour, eggs, and milk (hence the name "milk bar"). The government encouraged people to have their breakfast at these milk bars before work because: a) everyone would be eating the same thing at the same place ("equality" at its finest), b) people could eat alongside their fellow comrades, and c) the food was so carb & fat-loaded that you could make it through a hefty chunk of the work day without getting hungry. Apparently the ideal communist country makes it through work without stopping for some food...that would just not fly with me.

My "milk bar" pierogi

From the Poles that I've met along my travels, these "milk bars" are basically the only good thing that came out of the communist times. They still exist today (and are still subsidized by the government) and people can go there for a really cheap meal — most everything is less than 6 zloty (~$2). Obviously, I had to check it out. I headed down to one of the local milk bars in Warsaw and ordered some pierogi (traditional, Polish dumplings). The woman who took my order looked at me like I was absolutely mad... they seemed to address most of their customers by name so I gather that they usually only serve locals, and that most of their customers are regulars. Needless to say, I was a little out of place and they didn't seem to like me very much — it took me a solid twenty minutes to get my food while everyone else got theirs in five. Did I mention Polish hospitality? Nope. (hint: there's a reason for that...). 

After leaving Poland, I headed to Lithuania. The only reason that I even knew that Lithuania existed was because of the Lithuanian coffee cake at Claire's Cornercopia in New Haven, CT. (food seems to be a bit of a theme now) To my great disappointment, they don't actually seem to have that type of cake in Lithuania, so I'm thinking that Claire's doing some blatant false advertising. I won't hold it against her though because that cake is seriously delicious...one of the highlights of Yale, for sure. What Lithuania does have, however, is something resembling an over-sized, layered, crispy funnel cake. It's used primarily for celebratory purposes — weddings, birthdays, etc — and in comparison with a kit-kat bar, it is very expensive, so I didn't try it. Sorry.

Doesn't look at anything like Claire's cake...

So let's start from the beginning: I arrived in Kaunas, Lithuania from Warsaw and hopped on an inter-city tram. In a rare change of character, I actually paid for my tram ticket. For the majority of my trip I haven't exactly paid for my inter-city transport. There's this weird phenomenon in Europe where they seem to actually trust the local people to pay for their public transport even though no one really checks. HAH! American coming through....

For some reason, however, I felt compelled to pay the $1 tram ticket. BOOM for a woman's intuition! For the first time on my whole trip, police officers came on board to check tickets. And, yes, I will absolutely call it a woman's intuition because it is one of the few perks we get. Well, that and the whole "spare the women and children" bit, but we all know that's one courtesy that's on it's way out with the rest of 'em. Fair warning though for anyone who decides to take a trip to Lithuania in the near future — they checked my ticket again while I was there and that time they also asked to see my student card since I had purchased a student ticket. Thankfully my Yale ID doesn't seem to have an expiration date. I'll be working that system till I'm 30.

Very large, live fish for sale at the grocery store
... in the mall

I quickly discovered that while Kaunas is beautiful, it is a very small town. Thankfully, this very small town has a very large mall to go along with it. Inside this very large mall there is a proportionally large grocery store, cinema, and ice-skating rink (because sometimes 6 months of freezing cold winter just isn't enough).

My small-town boredom kicked in fairly rapidly so I decided to do what I do in all foreign countries when I'm bored and lonely — go to the movies. There's something rather comforting and narcissistic about seeing something that you know was created in America, by Americans, and featuring Americans that everyone else in the world pays to go see. So I bought my ridiculously low-priced ticket to comfort and narcissism (thank you Eastern Europe), grabbed my seat, and threw my legs up on the seat in front of me. Not more than five minutes later, some security guy came in specifically to tell me to get my feet off the seat in front of me. Okay, commies, calm down and get that secret camera off of me.

Ice-skating rink in the middle of the mall!

*Cultural side-note: apparently (in addition to making communist jokes) it is offensive to smile at people in Lithuania. A smile is seen as a gesture shared only between friends, so when a stranger smiles at another stranger it is interpreted —at the very least— as disingenuous, but also as rather insulting and derisive. I'm not going to sugarcoat it...that sucks for me. I seriously must have offended so many Lithuanians. I mean, my smile is my go to...Nervous? Uncomfortable? Sad? Totally Comfortable? Happy? Awkward?
All smiles. And, apparently, all offensive.

After practicing my scowl for a few days, it was time to test out my non-smiling demeanor in the capital city —Vilnius, Lithuania. I ventured back over to the Kaunas bus station and with a few minutes to spare, I figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to take a quick stop at the bathroom. It took me back to my Morocco days....a paid entrance to this:

Oh hell no...

And, of course, there was no toilet paper. Luckily, after a full month of travel in Eastern Europe, I have officially reached a "mommy" level of preparedness. At all times, I have a roll of toilet paper in my bag (stolen from a hostel, of course). I'm basically ready to raise children. JOKES. But in all seriousness, I only discuss such things because ya'll seriously need to pack some TP when you head to Eastern Europe...you'll thank me later. I accept monetary expressions of appreciation.

It was a rather quick trip over to Vilnius and when I arrived in the bus station, I immediately set out to find my hostel. As I was walking down the street, loaded down with my backpack, some woman said something to me in Russian and I looked at her utterly confused: a) I'm clearly not Russian, b) did I accidentally take a bus to Russia?? After seeing the stupid look on my face she replied, "ooohhh English!" Yes, please.

Turns out this woman was from Belarus and was just about the most overly-friendly person I've ever met. Somehow she ended up following me to my hostel, saying she had never stayed in one before and wanted to see what it was like. I later learned that it's pretty much inconceivable in the Belarusian mindset to pay to sleep in a room with strangers. When I put it that way, however, it kind of sounds weird in the American mindset as well. 

When I arrived at the hostel, I was greeted by a girl who didn't speak much English and was utterly confused by this extra Belarusian "friend" tagging along. I don't blame her — I was pretty confused myself. Eventually I pawned the Belarusian off on some New Yorker (west coast, best coast...sucker!) and headed into town to see what was goin' down in Vilnius. To my surprise, quite a lot actually. Every summer, the city hosts "Vilnius Days," which is a big street festival that people come to from all over Lithuania, basically to celebrate the fact that they exist as a country. For Lithuania, this is a huge feat *ahem*... Russia....

Aspiring sumo wrestlers

Oversized board games
littered the streets of Vilnius

The streets are filled with vendors selling locally crafted jewelry, food, and lots of beer. They also have a street blocked off essentially as a little kid's fantasy-land — there was a half-block game of twister, a station for sumo-wrestling, and a huge pool where little kids stumbled around in what were essentially waterproof human hamster wheels.

Clearly, that was my favorite section. I spent a solid 30 minutes just watching little kids stumble around in those floating hamster balls, and each time one of them fell I burst out laughing. Laughing, by the way, is bundled up with the whole "smiling is offensive" thing, so I received many a dirty look. It probably didn't help that I was also just sitting on a street corner eating some unidentifiable Lithuanian meat patty, drinking a beer, and just making fun of their children...not exactly my most charming moment.

They just keep falling

The drama of Eastern Europe is that street festivals and celebrations take place amidst a sea of horrifying history. In this case, the "Vilnius Days" street festival runs right in front of a building that once housed the Nazis and then later served as the KGB's Lithuanian headquarters for nearly fifty years. Today, this building serves as one of the more unique and impactful museums that I've come across: The Museum of Genocide Victims.

Lithuania was invaded by the Soviets in 1940, and then the Nazis in 1941. In 1944, the Soviets reclaimed the country and maintained power until Lithuania's independence in 1990. During that nearly fifty-year reign, the Soviets used this now-museum building as their KGB headquarters in the country.

The city has maintained the building as it was during KGB days, and uses the former administration offices on the first and second floors as educational museum spaces. After spending some time in that area of the museum, you can head down to the KGB prison basement. Everything remains exactly as it was — you can see where Lithuanians were detained, including solitary confinement cells, and the execution room, which witnessed over 1,000 murders. I was completely thrown off-guard when I walked into the isolated execution room and was greeted by a continuous video of execution re-enactments set exactly where I was standing. Adding to the eeriness of the whole experience is that very few people visit the museum (and Lithuania in general), so for the most part, you're wandering alone through the prison cells. That's one of those activities that you try to keep to a minimum, so I headed out as quickly as possible, only to find the street festival continuing in all of its merriment right outside of the building.

What I find hard to wrap my mind around when I switch from something as extreme as a genocide museum to a bustling street festival is that — aside from the children — all of the people around me had lived through that time in Lithuania. And, as a country of just 3.1 million (think a little more than the population of Chicago), you know that the violence and losses were personal for most. In this context —with all of my incredibly charming humor aside— the idea of a smile as something shared only amongst friends begins to make much more sense.

Trakai Castle, 14th c.
 Lithuania's typical "postcard" destination