Trakai!

Last week, we had a nice break from discussing dead Jews. Most of the participants loaded up on a bus (with air conditioning!) and headed to Trakai, which was advertised in our welcome packet as being the only castle in Eastern Europe to be surrounded entirely by water.

Our group had become pros at bus travel, but the short ride to Trakai wasn't quite long enough for some. As the bus crawled through slow, touristy traffic, someone near us called out, "Do we have to get off the bus yet?"

People piled out of the bus, and gathered in a circle around Laimos. Even though our day was entirely free of tours or dead Jews until six PM, and he was off duty as a tour guide, people were lost without his direction. He explained how Trakai was home to the Karaims, (and I'm a little fuzzy on this) some sort of Babylonian sect of people who are Jews, but not quite. As in not quite Jewish enough to be disturbed during the Holocaust. At this point, with the mention of more Jews, we decided to check out the castle.

According to Laimos, the castle tour was very touristy and fake, but we decided to investigate anyway.

There were a ton of people at Trakai--mostly Russian tourists, it seemed, as Trakai is a bit of a resort destination in Lithuania. It was also interesting to note how the lake had none of the tourist destination troubles that a lake in the United States might. People seemed content to just loop around the paths.

We crossed over the far bridge in the picture above to get to the castle. Once there, avoided the snaking line inside the castle and opted for a boat tour around the lake instead. We tried to piece together some puzzling signs and then found the correct dock for the cruise. Our tour boat showed up a few minutes later, and let out  its previous passengers, including at least forty children and nuns--orphans, we decided.

The cruise took us around the back of the castle. At one point, we nearly hit some people on paddleboats.

Back on the shore, we decided to get a bite to eat--the local and famous cuisine, little pockets of pastry and pork called kibinyis. The outdoor restaurants were crowded everywhere, and the only table we found was in the direct sun. So, we ordered kibinyis, beer, and Greek salad.
We shared our table with this nice guy:

We noticed that there were an absurd number of wedding parties--and, being our second Saturday in Lithuania, we'd noticed a pattern. Saturdays were wedding days, when brides and grooms and bridesmaids in shiny dresses were out in droves.

There were some seriously shiny bridesmaids dresses that didn't quite come out in these few pictures--amazingly tacky purple and gold dresses. From our outdoor cafe vantage point, we watched one shiny wedding party get into a rickety boat and sail away: