[This
is an anecdote from a trip I made with my son Keith in 2008 which took in
Lithuania, Belarus and Poland. I wrote
it for a travel competition in 2014.
Keith described the experience in his 2016 book Baltic Lenin: A Journey into Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania's Soviet Past. Unfortunately I didn’t think to photograph
the church so have included a snap of Keith surveying the rooftops of Kaunas.]
We
were headed to Belarus and only stopped in Kaunas, Lithuania’s second city,
because the cheapest route involved going via Lithuania and that’s where the
plane landed. Potentially a drawback, but
Kaunas turned out to be full of surprises.
We started with the Devil Museum, showcasing images of the horned one
from around the world in their infinite variety; you wouldn’t want to fall foul
of this little lot and have them poke you with their pitchforks. The museum devoted to folk music and
instruments seemed tame in comparison, welcoming as it was, and sadly time was
too short to permit a visit to the museum of Lithuanian medicine and pharmacy.
Yet
even devils could not compare with our oddest experience in Lithuania. That wasn’t the lettuce accompanying our
fried breakfast, or the loose-leaf tea without a strainer at the Devil Museum (diabolical!)
but the crypt of the Garrison Church, dedicated to St. Michael the
Archangel. We had strolled in to look at
the architecture and splendid decoration, but after a while our attention was
attracted by an elderly chap standing near a door in the corner who gestured us
over. He pointed down a spiral staircase
and urged us to descend into the darkness below.
His
English was as bad as our Lithuanian so he was unable to explain the attraction
of going into the bowels of the church with the lights off. Having seen some of those horror films in
which tourists find themselves minus vital organs in out-of-the-way places I
hesitated. Just for a moment though:
‘hell’ I thought (clearly the influence of those wicked devils), ‘Lithuania’s
in the EU, what’s likely to happen in a city you can get to by budget airline?’ Two ladies had gone ahead of us and it seemed
only right that we should show some of the old bulldog spirit and do the same.
So
we descended, expecting to find some light, but instead remained plunged in
musty-smelling pitch darkness. We bumped
into something, then something else. There
were all these things hanging down, and wherever you turned they were in your
way. I started thinking about those
horror films again, the fear of the unknown.
What were they, what were they made of, and why were they here? We became disoriented and
claustrophobic. With no idea where we
were going, bemusement turned to mild irritation as we wondered how long it
would take to find our way out.
Then
my companion had a burst of inspiration and took out his mobile phone. By its illumination we could see that the
place was full of white dangling obstacles, like thin punch bags, foam-covered
pillars and rubber kitchen gloves sticking out from the walls. It was surreal, and grubby, but not
threatening. Attracted by the glow, we
were shortly joined by the two ladies who had preceded us, equally glad to be
able to see what was going on. Together
we found some stairs in the opposite corner to those by which we had entered,
and were soon back in the welcome daylight, to the obvious annoyance of the
custodian who knew we had cheated.
We
were relieved to be out of the stygian gloom, but were left feeling baffled. Only later did we realise we had been in the
Museum of the Blind, an environment designed to show what it is like to be
without sight and have to rely on the other senses (stretching the concept of
the museum somewhat, we thought). We had
failed the challenge, though had we been aware of what the purpose was we might
have met it with more confidence, rather than thinking we were having a trick
played on us; in its eccentric fashion it certainly made us aware of the
difficulties the blind face every day. Belarus
presented its own variety of strangeness, but nothing to compare with that peculiar
crypt.
