EPILOGUE:
ruminating word nerd
As much as I enjoy the actual 'trip' parts of road tripping (at least some of the time), this one-day stopover in Vilnius was the part I'd been looking forward to most.
I actually have a long emotional connection to this city, though I've never been here before. Some time around the millennium I was in a band, and we decided to release a CD of poetry set to music. We found a beautiful poem called Frozen Forests, written by a Lithuanian poet and translated into English. Having contacted him and got his permission to use his words, I asked a little bit about his home town and did some looking on the internet. The immediate reaction was "Ooooh, so pretty!", repeated about a hundred times ... and of course I resolved that, whatever else happened in my life, I would go there.
I'm quite proud of my part in writing that song (it's unique and beautiful), and when I hear it, I often think of Vilnius. But that little songwriting escapade was over a decade ago.
Sometimes takes a while to follow through on these far-fetched schemes :-)
PART 1: FATIGUEABLES
So yeah ... I woke up yesterday in a 'city of dreams'. Or at least a city of my dreams. Have to say, though, it wasn't one of my all-time best wake-ups. I felt mentally sluggish and physically exhausted, and my feet looked as though they'd been stricken with plague; the impressively painful blisters I'd developed had for some reason turned black and yellow. Walking more than a few metres on them was a real trial.
This was not the enthusiastic spring-out-of-bed which befits such an occasion.
Rather enjoyably, though, my hostel is one of those forlorn- and weary-looking tower blocks with which ex-Soviet Republics are packed silly. The room is spartan but has everything I need; the eighth-floor balcony is another matter. Held onto the side of the building with a combination of concrete and rusty iron brackets, it's missing a bit between the vertical 'wall' and the horizontal 'floor'. Every time I go out there for a cigarette, I can't help glancing through the gap and seeing the street far below. To halt the sickening swoon of vertigo that invariably results, I then sit down hurriedly on a tiny metal chair, trying not to look anywhere else but at my shoes.
Anyway ... by around 11am, I'd worked out what was wrong: basically, the summer had chosen today to catch up with me. I'd spent ten intensely enjoyable but extremely gruelling weeks in summer camp, sleeping far too little and working far too much. There had to be some kind of reckoning ... and here it was, apparently.
It was mid-afternoon by the time I managed to coax myself out of the room and into the slightly creepy wood-panelled lift. I pressed the black plastic button marked '1' (the ground floor is level 1 in most countries – this "G" thing seems to something of an English-speaking anomaly), and the button buried itself firmly in the wall panel as per usual. When I reached the ground floor (sorry, the first level), it popped back into its original position with an unbelievably loud "crack!".
It does that every time. Never fails to scare the shit out of me.
Out of the hotel, I headed towards the Old Town. According to the little itinerary I'd laid out for myself, I was meant to be leaving Vilnius tomorrow. So I would have basically this afternoon and this evening to see what I could see before moving on. Trudging along on two sets of blisters (the left set and the right set), I found myself thinking "Well, maybe it won't be that great. I mean, maybe a couple of hours' walking around will be all the Vilnius I need."
Yeah right, Anthony. That's exactly what will happen.
Idiot.
PART 2: INTRIGUEABLES
It turns out that, in fact, Vilnius' Old Town is not only rather fabulous but also rather large.
The fabulousness comes partly from that classic Euro-mix of sunny, open squares and shaded little alleyways, with cafes and beer gardens tucked away down side streets and in leafy courtyards. Also, it's one of those wonderfully laid out cities where you can be walking down an ordinary road and suddenly spot the tower of a medieval citadel standing on a hilltop at the end of it. Soviet occupation has endowed the city with its fair share of brutalist statuary (my favourite kind), and from the look of things, the grand neo-classicism which dominated Eastern Europe and western Russia in late 19th/early 20thC must have flourished here too at around the same time.
Exiting at one end of the Old Town, the atmosphere changes immediately. The transition is marked by a red/brown block shaded by vines, with sunflowers at the entrance. If you head down the left side of that block, you find yourself in an alley next to a surviving section of the medieval wall.
Walking along outside the wall (as opposed to inside, where everything is well painted and pretty), you see an entirely different Vilnius. It's gritty and it's ancient, with crumbling facades and silent courtyards that you'd be more than a little nervous to enter. It's also well-nigh deserted – while the city's most lavishly-painted churches and grandest civic buildings stand literally metres away, there are more alley cats to be seen on this side of the wall than there are tourists.
Not sure how I always end up discovering the dingiest, most unkempt parts of the cities I visit. Occasionally I wonder if something in my personality compels me to seek them out ... but for what reason I don't know.
So I followed the wall around for about half a kilometre, where I came to a succession of crowded cobbled streets on one side, and vast open squares on the other.
In this part of town, people were generally doing the thing which distinguishes European cities from most others: they were having coffee, beer and ice cream outdoors. More specifically, they were doing this on large expanses of precious urban land that would be devoted to motor transport or zoned for retail development almost anywhere else in the world.
This, incidentally, is one reason why I will never, ever be 'over' Europe. On this continent, even urban planners (who often seem to be the biggest morons working in any field outside of national government or the software industry) are aware that the basic unit of society is neither the car nor the retail chain: it's the individual. To put that a slightly different way, Europeans nearly all seem to understand that an outdoor cafe brings far more to a city than a motorway or a shopping mall ever could. This is how it should work everywhere, and if it doesn't work that way where you are, you should be rioting right now instead of reading this.
Oops! Sorry for the off-topic rant there. Let's get back to Vilnius.
So yeah ... putting all these first impressions together, Vilnius struck me at first glance the way most of my favourite European cities tend to do. On the one hand, there were definite similarities to other places, and interesting comparisons to be made. On the other, there seemed to be a distinct atmosphere here, specific to this town, which had me feeling intrigued and excited as I wandered around.
Clearly, I was going to need an extra day ...
EPILOGUE:
the word nerd is off again ... this time about langauge
(surprise!)
Something else that's always intrigued me is the way that countries, cities and peoples get different names in other languages. For example, the country known to its own people as Zhong Guo becomes "China" in English, "Ilestri" in Welsh, and so on. Likewise, Deutschland becomes Allemagne in French, from which I guess English somehow derived Germany, while the Finns call it Saksa. And speaking of the Finns, how the heck did Suomi (the actual name of the country) morph into 'Finland' ? And why do they call Russia Venäjä ?
Those are just a few random examples. Of course, I could go on about many others ... like the history of word 'njemets', which is fascinating. In Russian and several other Slavic languages, it means "German man", though its literal meaning is "man who has been struck dumb". The meaning change happened over centuries, and incorporated a stage where every foreigner in Russia was called 'njemets' ... because, not being able to speak Russian, they were for all intents and purposes without speech.
Sorry, I know this is an utterly off-topic ramble. I just think it's hilarious (and more than a little insulting) that in Russian, if you're talking to a guy who you think may be from Germany, and you want to check, you effectively ask "So, are you a man who has been struck dumb?". And if your guess is correct, the guy will answer "yes".
Blah blah.
The one I actually wanted to mention, though, was the word 'Lietuva'. This refers to an object which, in English, we call Lithuania. But the question is: why do we do that? Well, the standard answer is that all languages have processes of making foreign words 'fit', and English is no exception. I can see that in some instances ... but other times I think it's just lazy and/or silly.
So let me teach you how to say this word. There are just a few things you need to know.
To start with, the stress is on the first syllable.
Also, the i and e run together to form a sound very typical of Slavic languages. It sounds like "yes" without the s ... so 'ye', basically. (If you know Russian, just use an ordinary Russian 'e', and if you know Polish, use an ordinary 'ie'.) That gives you something like 'LYE'.
When you get to the 'u', make it short and round, like the oo in 'good'.
LYEtu.
Now the v. You need to soften this, so that it takes on some of the qualities of an /f/ sound and some of the qualities of a /w/. Try that. Then add the final a, which sounds like the last letter in umbrella.
Put that all together, and you've got LYEtu[w/v/f]a.
Now tell me ... isn't that a far lovelier word than 'Lithuania' ?
I certainly think so )))
ruminating word nerd
As much as I enjoy the actual 'trip' parts of road tripping (at least some of the time), this one-day stopover in Vilnius was the part I'd been looking forward to most.
I actually have a long emotional connection to this city, though I've never been here before. Some time around the millennium I was in a band, and we decided to release a CD of poetry set to music. We found a beautiful poem called Frozen Forests, written by a Lithuanian poet and translated into English. Having contacted him and got his permission to use his words, I asked a little bit about his home town and did some looking on the internet. The immediate reaction was "Ooooh, so pretty!", repeated about a hundred times ... and of course I resolved that, whatever else happened in my life, I would go there.
I'm quite proud of my part in writing that song (it's unique and beautiful), and when I hear it, I often think of Vilnius. But that little songwriting escapade was over a decade ago.
Sometimes takes a while to follow through on these far-fetched schemes :-)
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
So yeah ... I woke up yesterday in a 'city of dreams'. Or at least a city of my dreams. Have to say, though, it wasn't one of my all-time best wake-ups. I felt mentally sluggish and physically exhausted, and my feet looked as though they'd been stricken with plague; the impressively painful blisters I'd developed had for some reason turned black and yellow. Walking more than a few metres on them was a real trial.
This was not the enthusiastic spring-out-of-bed which befits such an occasion.
Rather enjoyably, though, my hostel is one of those forlorn- and weary-looking tower blocks with which ex-Soviet Republics are packed silly. The room is spartan but has everything I need; the eighth-floor balcony is another matter. Held onto the side of the building with a combination of concrete and rusty iron brackets, it's missing a bit between the vertical 'wall' and the horizontal 'floor'. Every time I go out there for a cigarette, I can't help glancing through the gap and seeing the street far below. To halt the sickening swoon of vertigo that invariably results, I then sit down hurriedly on a tiny metal chair, trying not to look anywhere else but at my shoes.
Anyway ... by around 11am, I'd worked out what was wrong: basically, the summer had chosen today to catch up with me. I'd spent ten intensely enjoyable but extremely gruelling weeks in summer camp, sleeping far too little and working far too much. There had to be some kind of reckoning ... and here it was, apparently.
It was mid-afternoon by the time I managed to coax myself out of the room and into the slightly creepy wood-panelled lift. I pressed the black plastic button marked '1' (the ground floor is level 1 in most countries – this "G" thing seems to something of an English-speaking anomaly), and the button buried itself firmly in the wall panel as per usual. When I reached the ground floor (sorry, the first level), it popped back into its original position with an unbelievably loud "crack!".
It does that every time. Never fails to scare the shit out of me.
Out of the hotel, I headed towards the Old Town. According to the little itinerary I'd laid out for myself, I was meant to be leaving Vilnius tomorrow. So I would have basically this afternoon and this evening to see what I could see before moving on. Trudging along on two sets of blisters (the left set and the right set), I found myself thinking "Well, maybe it won't be that great. I mean, maybe a couple of hours' walking around will be all the Vilnius I need."
Yeah right, Anthony. That's exactly what will happen.
Idiot.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
It turns out that, in fact, Vilnius' Old Town is not only rather fabulous but also rather large.
The fabulousness comes partly from that classic Euro-mix of sunny, open squares and shaded little alleyways, with cafes and beer gardens tucked away down side streets and in leafy courtyards. Also, it's one of those wonderfully laid out cities where you can be walking down an ordinary road and suddenly spot the tower of a medieval citadel standing on a hilltop at the end of it. Soviet occupation has endowed the city with its fair share of brutalist statuary (my favourite kind), and from the look of things, the grand neo-classicism which dominated Eastern Europe and western Russia in late 19th/early 20thC must have flourished here too at around the same time.
Exiting at one end of the Old Town, the atmosphere changes immediately. The transition is marked by a red/brown block shaded by vines, with sunflowers at the entrance. If you head down the left side of that block, you find yourself in an alley next to a surviving section of the medieval wall.
Walking along outside the wall (as opposed to inside, where everything is well painted and pretty), you see an entirely different Vilnius. It's gritty and it's ancient, with crumbling facades and silent courtyards that you'd be more than a little nervous to enter. It's also well-nigh deserted – while the city's most lavishly-painted churches and grandest civic buildings stand literally metres away, there are more alley cats to be seen on this side of the wall than there are tourists.Not sure how I always end up discovering the dingiest, most unkempt parts of the cities I visit. Occasionally I wonder if something in my personality compels me to seek them out ... but for what reason I don't know.
So I followed the wall around for about half a kilometre, where I came to a succession of crowded cobbled streets on one side, and vast open squares on the other.In this part of town, people were generally doing the thing which distinguishes European cities from most others: they were having coffee, beer and ice cream outdoors. More specifically, they were doing this on large expanses of precious urban land that would be devoted to motor transport or zoned for retail development almost anywhere else in the world.
This, incidentally, is one reason why I will never, ever be 'over' Europe. On this continent, even urban planners (who often seem to be the biggest morons working in any field outside of national government or the software industry) are aware that the basic unit of society is neither the car nor the retail chain: it's the individual. To put that a slightly different way, Europeans nearly all seem to understand that an outdoor cafe brings far more to a city than a motorway or a shopping mall ever could. This is how it should work everywhere, and if it doesn't work that way where you are, you should be rioting right now instead of reading this.
Oops! Sorry for the off-topic rant there. Let's get back to Vilnius.
So yeah ... putting all these first impressions together, Vilnius struck me at first glance the way most of my favourite European cities tend to do. On the one hand, there were definite similarities to other places, and interesting comparisons to be made. On the other, there seemed to be a distinct atmosphere here, specific to this town, which had me feeling intrigued and excited as I wandered around.
Clearly, I was going to need an extra day ...
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
the word nerd is off again ... this time about langauge
(surprise!)
Something else that's always intrigued me is the way that countries, cities and peoples get different names in other languages. For example, the country known to its own people as Zhong Guo becomes "China" in English, "Ilestri" in Welsh, and so on. Likewise, Deutschland becomes Allemagne in French, from which I guess English somehow derived Germany, while the Finns call it Saksa. And speaking of the Finns, how the heck did Suomi (the actual name of the country) morph into 'Finland' ? And why do they call Russia Venäjä ?
Those are just a few random examples. Of course, I could go on about many others ... like the history of word 'njemets', which is fascinating. In Russian and several other Slavic languages, it means "German man", though its literal meaning is "man who has been struck dumb". The meaning change happened over centuries, and incorporated a stage where every foreigner in Russia was called 'njemets' ... because, not being able to speak Russian, they were for all intents and purposes without speech.
Sorry, I know this is an utterly off-topic ramble. I just think it's hilarious (and more than a little insulting) that in Russian, if you're talking to a guy who you think may be from Germany, and you want to check, you effectively ask "So, are you a man who has been struck dumb?". And if your guess is correct, the guy will answer "yes".
Blah blah.
The one I actually wanted to mention, though, was the word 'Lietuva'. This refers to an object which, in English, we call Lithuania. But the question is: why do we do that? Well, the standard answer is that all languages have processes of making foreign words 'fit', and English is no exception. I can see that in some instances ... but other times I think it's just lazy and/or silly.
So let me teach you how to say this word. There are just a few things you need to know.
To start with, the stress is on the first syllable.
Also, the i and e run together to form a sound very typical of Slavic languages. It sounds like "yes" without the s ... so 'ye', basically. (If you know Russian, just use an ordinary Russian 'e', and if you know Polish, use an ordinary 'ie'.) That gives you something like 'LYE'.
When you get to the 'u', make it short and round, like the oo in 'good'.
LYEtu.
Now the v. You need to soften this, so that it takes on some of the qualities of an /f/ sound and some of the qualities of a /w/. Try that. Then add the final a, which sounds like the last letter in umbrella.
Put that all together, and you've got LYEtu[w/v/f]a.
Now tell me ... isn't that a far lovelier word than 'Lithuania' ?
I certainly think so )))
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