A Few Days in Vilnius, Lithuania

Vilnius, December 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

Greetings again from Vilnius. I am sitting in a Japanese restaurant
overlooking the town square and listening to two Russian men talk at
the next table. I was a little worried when I saw that my flight last
Friday was full of Russian businessmen intent on drinking their way
through the two hour flight from Moscow. They were so loud that I
eventually gave up my first row seat and headed for the back of
business class.

We had been late leaving. The Lithuanian crew noted that the flight
always departs late from Moscow. “The Russians are drinking,” she
explained. The comment didn’t seem entirely fair. For 20 minutes, the
Aeroflot ground crew had shouted “Vil-knee-yus? Vilnius?” verbally
assaulting every passenger who walked past the gate. It seemed that the
newly opened airport had no working announcement system. Even the woman
security officer did her best. “Where is your friend?” she asked me as
I lingered in the boarding area, not wanting to head for the unheated
transit bus until the last moment. “I have no friends,” I responded to
communicate that I was not traveling with the lost passenger but
feeling lonely in a cold Moscow airport on a Friday night.

The man who boarded 30 minutes late was no strappling boisterous
drinker. He looked more like a dark-skinned mine-worker from the
Russian Far East and he bowed his head as he entered the plane and
sought refuge in the back.

Lithuania was the first of the central European states to declare its
independence from mother Russia in 1990. Lithuania had had independence
from Russia during the period between the two world wars and fought to
regain its status as soon as the USSR started to collapse. However even
in 1993, I found that of the three Baltic countries—Latvia, Estonia and
Lithuania—it was the Lithuanians who most often wanted to speak through
an interpreter. I was surprised to find that even now, three years
after joining the European Union in 2004, some of my government
counterparts preferred to speak in Lithuanian than in English.

Trying to buy a SIM card for my cell phone was a similar experience.
The only store open late on a Saturday afternoon was a tech store,
where the sole sales person did not speak English and had trouble
figuring out what I thought were obvious hand signals. I showed her my
phone and said, “SIM card?” but she still failed to understand. Then I
took the phone apart and showed where there was no SIM card and finally
she understood. Then the difficulty was in buying extra minutes. I
usually buy an extra $20 in minutes at the same time as the card but my
communications skills failed me again. I approached a middle-aged
couple who entered the store and asked if they spoke English. “Yes, but
only English,” was the response. “Could you please help me buy a SIM
card?” I asked. “But we only speak English,” they repeated as I
realized that Lithuanian was not among their languages.

Finally I exited the store and looked for some teenagers to help me. I
found a beautiful 17-year-old who then dragged her three girlfriends
plus boyfriend into the store to help me. When we had trouble figuring
out my new cell number, she used my phone to call hers so that my
number would show up on her caller-id. In response to my questions, she
told me that she had just graduated from high school and hoped to study
medicine in university. She was clearly the leader of the group and
determined to help a stranger. Her friends soon grew impatient, but
still smiled until we finished the purchase of the card.

Vilnius is a lovely town. The old city has been renovated with
cobblestone streets that discourage car traffic. Blinking Christmas
lights in red and white decorate the trees and street-lamps. The city
needs only snow to make it magical.

Unfortunately I will not be here long enough to see it. I needed only
two days for my meetings and will fly to Brussels tomorrow. Will be
back in DC on Friday night.

Sue