Old Town- New Name

The taxi drive from the airport was not encourging for a two-week stay, If you picture any ungentrified slum in any city, circa late 80's, maybe Detroit, maybe parts of Los Angeles during the riots, but with more grafitti, then you have it. But then we arrived at our apartment in Old Town ,tucked away behind a massive wooden door in a hidden courtyard (complete with a creepy staute) off a boutique-y funky, twisty 12th Century cobblestone street, Vilnius became for me a wonderful secret garden, full of mystery and exotica. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, for those of you fans of the book/movie, describes a bit of the atmosphere here.

I don't want to be called Bunny in this place, with these surroundings, and with new people. I need a different self to fit the foreign-ness of this Baltic gem. Because the Literary Seminar folks know me as Eileen, from emails and official documents, I shortened it to Lena, which fits well into this Eastern European milieu. How different the reactions toward me were than when I was Bunny! So now I am Lena in Vilnius, and maybe beyond.

When the rain stops, pictures will follow.

Lena

we're here!

Yesterday,  Friday, we left from San Francisco at 7 AM on a plane bound for New York. It was a reasonably comfortable flight. Once in New York, we boarded another plane bound for Helsinki, Finland, which was not a comfortable flight. The Helsinki airport was fantastic, though. Lots of interesting shops, restaurants, bookstores, a really slow-moving passport checkpoint. Unfortunately, the only thing we could do in Helsinki was ogle the shops and make a mad dash to the Vilnius plane. Too bad. An hour later, we landed in Vilnius.

Each airport we visited was progressively stranger. SFO is nice, JFK is okay, Helsinki was a little puzzling, but Vilnius was the real gem. Upon landing, I noticed several planes in various stages of decay parked in the grass surrounding the runway. There was no passport check (no stamp!), and the terminal opened into a small hallway lined with columns and decoration fit for a strange concrete Greek palace. People were snapping photos of their friends and family as they arrived (although one of our new Lithuanian friends said that people ignore the Russian celebrities who come to shop in Vilnius, but wait at the airport to take pictures of basketball stars, so who knows). We met up with the Summer Literary Seminar crew, piled into a taxi, and were on our way.

Introduction, part 2.