visiting Vilnius part two
Time for more pictures from our trip to Vilnius in November! As I mentioned in the first post, I really enjoyed this city. The centre is not that big, so we could reach everything easily by foot. A reason why I was every night tired and we went back to the hotel quite early.
On the second evening we went to watch “Gravity” which I liked a lot! It was frustrating to think about the fact, how it would feel to be lost in space. The movie tickets were much cheaper than in Finland, so we had to take this chance for a relaxed evening. 🙂 After the movie I felt quite bad because of the pizza I ate for lunch. The restaurant looked like a fun place, it was styled as air plane. Sadly the food did not match my first impression.
We went to see the Franz Zappa monument. Honestly, I am not that familiar with his music… Before our trip I told my father about the statue and he said I have to take pictures for him. Afterwards we visited the KGB Museum/Museum Genocide Victims. It was interesting to read about Lithuanian’s long and painful struggle for independence. In the basement were old cells for enemies of the system. You could even go more down to the execution chamber, which was one of the scariest moments in my life. You could even see the bullet holes in the walls… (If you never make it to Vilnius, visit the old “Stasi/secret police prison” in Berlin!)
On the last day we walked by the Vilnia River and came across a park full of families, which I am sure is even nicer to visit in summer .Then we walked further and visited the “republic Užupis”, a district of the city that has its own constitution.
(For those who are interested, this is a good article about the “republic” & the idea behind the Zappa statue as well.) This constitution is displayed in man languages, as well in German and Finnish. Parts are for instance: “People have the right to have no rights” or “People have the right to be happy.” As it is with most cities, summer is the better travel season. It was quite empty in Užupis, I can imagine in summer it’s full of people sitting in cafés and walking around the small shops. On the other hand, I enjoy travelling in autumn, there were not many tourists in the whole city. It was nice to move freely around without bumping into tourists taking pictures.
