Having recovered from our Poland trip, we started looking into our next travel.
Tomas had a student-free day on Friday the 8th, so we thought that would be a perfect chance for us to take a weekend away. We didn't really have a destination in mind (we had a list of short trip and longer trip ideas but no particular goal). So, we decided to search up flights and see what the cheapest options were. One that came up was a flight to Kaunas, the second biggest city in Lithuania.
We had been interested in seeing Lithuania, but it hadn't been right at the top of the list, but this would be a good chance. The capital city, Vilnius, was only an hour and a half drive from Kaunas, so some plans started to come together. We could visit both cities, one day each, and fly home Sunday evening. If we flew in and out of Kaunas (which was also the cheapest option) we could hire a car.
I started my usual job of looking for places in each of the cities to look at. It was then that I also saw Trakai Castle and the Hill of Crosses. We could reach these places with the car and the distances weren't too bad - so our plan came together.
We arrived at the airport in Copenhagen by 4pm on Friday, ready for our flight at 5:30. Then I received an email - the flight had been delayed by an hour. We eventually flew out at 6:30. After an hour and a half flight and a 1 hour time difference, we arrived in Kaunas airport at 9pm. But the time we collected our car it was close to 10.
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| Driving into Kaunas - The Bull and Cross that form its coat of arms |
Fortunately the drive into town was only a half hour. We checked into our hotel at 10:30 and then ducked out to buy some things for breakfast (luckily there were a few Lidl shops that closed at 11pm) and get dinner.
We were staying in the Family Hotel.
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| View from our room |
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| Our hotel |
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| View from our room |
A bit of history:
Lithuania
Lithuania (Lietuva) is one of the three Baltic States (with Estonia and Latvia) and a member of NATO and the European Union. It has a population of 2.86 million. The main language is Lithuanian.
The Kingdom of Lithuania was founded in 1253 and became the Grand Dutchy of Lithuania, becoming the biggest country in Europe at the time. It united with Poland in 1386 and formed a Commonwealth with the Poles in 1569.
In 1772 Russia began to conquer the Commonwealth's territory and at the end of World War I, Lithuania declared itself independent of Poland.
Lithuania was occupied multiple times in the Second World War, first by the Soviet Union, then Germany and then the Soviets again. At the end of the war, Lithuania was made part of the USSR. It the first country to declare independence just before the dissolving of the USSR in 1990.
The origin of the name Lithuania is not known, but it may be from the nearby River Lietava, or from the Leičiai, a warrior group present in the area.
The coat of arms is a mounted knight with sword and shield (one of the oldest European coats of arms):
The flag is a tricolour, yellow, green, red - adopted in 1918. The colours are common in the national dress:
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| Page from a guide book |
Kaunas
Kaunas (previous known as Kovno) is the second largest city in Lithuania. It is believed the name comes from a personal name.
The coat of arms for the city is a white aurochs with a golden cross between its horns:
It is believed that the city was intially founded in the 10th century and the castle was build in the late 1200s.
The original castle was destroyed by the Teutonic Order in 1362. A second Teutonic attack captured the city again in 1368 and 1369.
Vilnius
Vilnius was named after the Vilnia River (meaning ripple in Lithuanian), and has been known by many different spellings: Vilna (English), Wilno (Polish), Вiльня [Vilnia] (Belarusian), Wilna (German) and Вильна [Vilna] (Russian).
There is a founding legend associated with Grand Duke Gediminas, stating that he was hunting European bison (Wisent) in Šventaragis near the River Vilnia. While at camp he dreamt of a giant iron wolf standing on a hill and howling. The sound was as loud as that of a pack of ten wolves. A priest interpreted his dream as the ruler of Lithuania having to build a castle on the hill. Gediminas built the castle and named the city Vilnius.
Mentions of the castle first appeared as 1253 and the city in 1323 as Vilna - moving the seat of the Grand Dutchy of Lithuania to the Vilnius instead of Senieji Trakai Castle (the old Trakai Castle).
The city was occupied by Russian forces during the Thirteen Years' War (1654-1667). The Russians burnt and pillaged the city, killing large numbers of its citizens. The city was then looted by Sweden in the Great Northern War (1700-1721). The bad times continued with the plague in 1710 and five large fires (1715, 1737, 1741, 1748 and 1749). Next, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was partitioned and split between Russia, the Hapsburg Empire and Prussia.
Vilnius was taken as part of the Russian Empire and then by Napoleon. A series of uprisings against the Russians took place in 1800s and in 1863 the response was a series of harsh retaliations - including banning of the Lithuanian and Polish language and removal of civil liberties.
The coat of arms shows Saint Christopher with baby Jesus. The motto is "Unity - Justice - Hope"
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