Day 11

Arrived in Vilnius after passing through modern out of town shopping areas that could have placed us anywhere in Europe and some of them wouldn't have looked out of place in Britain in the 1970's!

Our hotel,thankfully for Colin, has air conditioning which will guarantee he will have a good night sleep!

Walking around the old town it is clear that the most things we are going to see on this tour are churches and any architecture from 17th century when these towns made their money from trade. The architecture of the time is pretty consistent so we aren't expecting amazing discoveries!

We visited one of the towers of the castle parts of which had survived through from the 14th century although over the centuries most of it had been destroyed and then rebuilt. One of the exhibits was fascinating all about something which happened in 1989. In 1989 over 2 1/2 million people held hands stretching from here all the way through to Riga and then on to Tallinn as a demonstration of their desire to free themselves and rebuild after the end of communism in these 3 countries. We wondered why this momentous happening hadn't made front page news across the world the same as the breaking down of the Berlin wall had; or were we so insular in our own world that we took no notice of what was happening?

Having visited these three ex Communist countries we are thinking, that they have all in their eagerness to become western European, lost whatever individual identity they had before before being ruled over and now the result is total blandness and uniformity; one of the things they were railing against.

We are just as guilty in the UK, as all town centres hold the same shops and it is only those with councils who resisted the 60's and 70's urge for demolishing the old and putting up hideous and bland concrete squares that have kept some of our towns unique; so many of them are interchangeable and with the increasing popularity of out of town shopping centres we also will be destroying the essence of what makes our towns and counties interesting.