Vilnius; Sunday, 27 May, 2007

After yesterdays increasingly oppressive heat it was inevitable that something would give, and shortly after having drifted off to sleep I was woken by a spectacular thunder storm. With lightning almost over head, and the sounds echoing off the hills that surround Vilnius on most sides, it was very impressive, as was the associated spectacular downpour, and more importantly the strong wind and significant drop in humidity!

However, by the time I woke up again at a little after 8, the temperatures and humidity had started to rise again. By the time I stepped out of the hotel and 10 it was already baking. I walked in towards town, stopping off at a supermarket to purchase large quantities of bottled water (both the guide book and NHS had warned about the water in Vilnius.) First stop of the morning was the archaeological museum.

The museum traces the history of humankind in the area that currently forms Lithuania from the first traces about 11,000 years ago through until the end of the 14th century AD. After looking around the museum I walked next-door to the Lithuanian national museum. This picks up the story of the Lithuanian people from the 14th century through until the outbreak of war. A small exhibition also traces the history of Stalin’s deportations which took place in 1941 (until the Nazis invaded) and from 1944 (once the Red Army routed the Nazis).

From the national museum I walked up the main street to a government building. Today it houses a museum, in the past it was the headquarters of the KGB. In its basement are the cells where the KGB extracted their confessions and killed thousands of prisoners. The museum is spread over three floors. The entry floor and the second floor have exhibitions on the KGB, the Lithuanian partisan resistance, which was all but crushed by the KGB in 1953, and the methods the KGB used for keeping tabs on the population. The museum is very interesting, but the basement is probably not an ideal family day out. The cells form a bleak confirmation of the way the KGB treated their "prisoners". The two most distressing parts are the padded cell, where inmates were put to be beaten without others hearing, and the execution cell, where thousands of people were killed.

Emerging back into the daylight you are struck by the bottom rows of stones on the outside of the building. Carved into each one is a name and two dates, all of the second dates fall between 1947 and 1953, when the Stalinist purges were at their height. These are the names of just some of the people who only ever entered the building.

So far today I had experienced an almost continuous timeline from the first humankind in Lithuania through to the repression of the KGB. It was only right then to hop on a trolley bus to one of the most important sites in Lithuania. In the early hours of 13 January 1991 soviet troops rolled up at the TV tower in Vilnius. Earlier the previous year the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic had voted to split from the USSR and seek its independence. By January tensions were running high and on the 13th blood was shed. 12 Lithuanian's died defending the tower, independent Lithuanian TV carried on broadcasting until the soldiers physically forced them off air. On December 31st of that year the USSR ceased to exist, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia had gained their independence by the Autumn. Today the entrance to the TV tower is marked with wooded crosses in memory of those who fell in making the Baltic states free.

The tower itself has a viewing platform and revolving restaurant from which you can get stunning views over the city, and at the time I visited, the spectacular thunder storm that was raging around the tower. After having done a full rotation (about an hour) I descended and caught the trolley bus back to the hotel, arriving back just seconds before the even heavier and more spectacular thunder storm that then broke.

90 minutes late the storm was finally subsiding so I decided to take a chance and head out into town for dinner. On the way there were several more rumbles, and a few spots of rain, but these were the very last gasp and by the time I had settled down to eat (taking another big chance by sitting outside) the warm late evening sun was pushing away the remaining clouds.

After dinner I had a short wander through the town before heading back to the hotel.