From Russia with Lunch (6 page)

This became apparent as we inched through the traffic which clustered around the shiny glass skyscrapers and boxy shopping centres in the newer part of the city. This was, however, the opportunity to run my planned route around the country by Robert. With each town mentioned, he became increasingly concerned. As we pulled up outside my hotel, he asked how I had managed to find a driver who would join me for several weeks on the road. I replied that I hadn't and would be hiring a car. He then shook my hand with the kind of formality usually reserved for bunkered soldiers about to go over the top.

3

A spa is born

An Englishman, a Frenchman, a German and a Jew are lost in the desert. Weak and dehydrated, the German moans, ‘I'm so thirsty. I must have beer.' The Frenchman adds, ‘I'm so thirsty. I must have wine.' The Brit chimes in with, ‘I'm so thirsty. I must have tea.' The Jew says, ‘I'm so thirsty. I must have diabetes.'

The reason for Robert's concern became clear the next morning while browsing through a leaflet from the car hire company. Aside from the fact that I had never piloted a left-hand drive through a right-side-of-the-road nation, it seemed the first place I had chosen to do so has the highest rate of auto fatalities in the European Union. I later found out that Lithuania also has the highest suicide rate in the EU and a significant number of self-sacrificers choose to die in their vehicles.

In retrospect, the task was not as daunting as the statistics might suggest, but that's not to say the experience was free of challenges. For a start, yield signs are treated as mere suggestions, rather than instructions, and truck and mopeds alike stream into your path under the assumption that you will apply the necessary brakes. Which you do. Then there's the rather frightening combination of mobile phones and post-adolescent leadfootedness. On countless occasions, Adidas-clad young men roared past me in battered Audis with one hand on the wheel and one eye on the road, the other of each being occupied by a bout of furious text messaging. Of course, such behaviour is by no means confined to Lithuania but is rather a global trait carried out by a small moronity.

Seatbelts are also considered a nuisance, a trend which the authorities are trying to stem. One of the key strategies is a television campaign so graphic it makes
Sin City
look like
Happy Days.
Back home, these messages are usually delivered amid the squeal of rubber on bitumen following a cutaway to the shocked face of an angelic soon-to-be victim. The next shot is a pull-back to a scene of mangled metal surrounded by emergency personnel shaking their heads at the futility of it all. This approach was deemed too subtle for Lithuania's acceleration junkies and the finished TV spot actually features an airborne toddler dummy flying headfirst through a windscreen and bouncing off the bonnet.

For all their bad press, in my experience Lithuanian drivers were not hostile. Rather, most simply didn't have anyone to teach them about road niceties as this is the first generation to enjoy widespread car ownership. U-turns will be thrown without warning or regard for solid lines. Tailgating could be a national sport and you can forget about thankyou waves should you let someone into traffic. That said, blaring horns are rare and I didn't see a single fender bender in the weeks and thousands of kilometres spent on Lithuanian roads. There is certainly no suggestion of the road rage so evident in Australia, no single-digit salutes and none of the expletive-laden exchanges that lead to duelling wheel locks. Driving in Lithuania is what it is and either you buy into it or hail a cab.

Where the world can learn something from Lithuania is in the area of roadsigns. Pedestrian crossings are signalled by depictions of an adult striding sedately. Around schools, however, the picture is one of three children in full sprint mode. Similarly, in rural areas where cattle might stray onto the road, they are signified exactly as they are most likely to appear: static. Deer, on the other hand, prance like antlered Nureyevs. The best signs are those alerting travellers to upcoming picnic spots. These feature the ubiquitous tables placed beneath pine tree silhouettes which totter over the scene at an angle so extreme as to suggest a last supper.

My first self-drive destination was Trakai, a heavily tour-isted district an hour out of Vilnius. A smudge of lime rind between lakes Totoriskiai, Luka and Galve, the district is an art director's wet dream and a photo retoucher's nightmare – every vista more beguiling than the last, perfectly composed and with no airbrushing required. It is a Constable made manifest with swathes of conifer forest tumbling to wind-billowed water the shade of a purebred heeler. In the foreground stand clapboard houses painted sunflower yellow and emerald green, which have peeled and faded just so. These dwellings are neat but ramshackle, decorative but casually so. Each is garlanded by purple daises, vermilion hydrangeas and chrysanthemums exploding in two-tone pyrotechnics. Almost every garden also features an apple tree heavy with rouged fruit. The town is much loved by Lithuanians and its 7000 inhabitants are custodians of a history that once saw it function as the nation's capital.

Trakai's chief attraction is also Lithuania's most photographed. Built in the fourteenth century and destroyed by Russian adversaries around 350 years later, the Island Castle occupies an entire islet. Under the rule of Gediminas' grandson, Grand Duke Vytautus The Great – a man who was clearly as fond of adjectives as he was armaments – it was considered one of Europe's most formidable. Viewed from a distance it's easy to understand why.

Reached by a series of wooden footbridges, the Island Castle is an imposing array of bloated tiled turrets and defensive stone walls which are up to 3.9 metres thick. These ensconce a gravel trapezoid courtyard that easily measures 100 metres long and 20 across at its widest point. Three foreboding guardtowers – two on either side of the entrance and a third on the northwest corner – ensured no approach went unseen and this space is ringed by casements used for lackeys' quarters and storage. Beyond it lies a fortified drawbridge leading to the five-storey royal residence, which is arranged around a damp stone square the size of a squash court.

Up close, the place is a bit of a shemozzle. Restored between 1951 and 1962, those in charge of the project seemed hamstrung by both budget and time constraints. Getting the place finished was apparently more important than getting it right. Which makes sense when you consider how odd it was that the Soviet authorities allowed such a monument to Lithuania's once dominant military might to be resurrected. The restorers concerned were acutely aware of the possibility that their Soviet overlords might change their minds at any minute, and as a result decided to focus on broad brushstrokes as opposed to detail. I also don't know whether the technology was available in the 1950s and 1960s to colour-match masonry and tiling but the original bricks and rough stonework contrast markedly with the newer manufactured variety. The tiled roof, for example, appears freshly ripped off a McMansion, which leaves the entire structure looking like it is wearing a badly selected hairpiece from under whose periphery peek tendrils of an entirely different hue.

A maze of exhibits inside gave some clue as to the opulence enjoyed by the castle's inhabitants. A collection of dainty, gold-rimmed Venetian glass in watercolour blues and yellows receded to one of intricately carved smoking pipes, delicate lace fans and caches of Lithuanian, Polish and Swedish coins which were found hidden in the ground during foundation excavations in 1963. There was also a significant amount of glazing, but that was confined to my eyes. Far more intriguing was the castle's collection of militariana – a word which I don't think exists but should. There were solid metal cannonballs the size of pouffes, chain mail combat gear and swords that made Excalibur look like a toothpick. Oddly enough, one room housed a taxidermy menagerie that not only featured local fauna but a tiger, a leopard and a lion. How these poor felines ended up here with perma-sneers and smelling vaguely of formaldehyde is anybody's guess. I tried to find out by asking the lone attendant – who also had a perma-sneer and smelled faintly of formaldehyde. She replied, ‘Toilet. Two litas.'

Yes, in addition to the entry fee to the castle, one paid to pee. Making my way past daytrippers mugging in the stocks and cages once used on prisoners, the experience was brightened immeasurably by the chance to have a crack at using some vaguely authentic bows and arrows in a nearby drained moat. Let me tell you, if the enemy was a foot high and two away, I would have been deadly.

In addition to filling the castle with treasures acquired from various bellicose campaigns, the Lithuanian gentry also brought home human cargo. One such group were the Tartars. Captured after the battle of the Golden Horn in 1398, several families were transported to Trakai and apparently liked it so much that they sent for the rellies. Descendants of Turks and Mongol tribes, the Tartars were soldiers who were ferocious and disciplined in equal measure, not to mention being horsebreeders and tanners of some repute. In modern recruiting terms, these would be described as a ‘desirable skill sets'. Devotees of Islam, the men maintained their traditional wardrobe of long black tunics with no collars but curlicues of gold braiding and an elongated white pork-pie style hat with maroon trim. The women stayed inside. Five thousand Tartars live in Lithuania today and no one has yet surpassed them when it comes to making sauces served as an accompaniment to fish.

Another sect picked up at the medieval equivalent of duty free was the Karaites. Often claimed – by Jews – as a Semitic tribe, their religion adheres only to the authority of the Old Testament and Decalogue. Sure they read Hebrew and use finger-shaped pointers to touch the sacred parchment, but the expansive Talmudic interpretations of the Law and oral religious laws have no bearing on the Karaite faith. Which makes them kinda Jewish in the same way Sammy Davis Jr was. Emerging in the eighth century, the Karaites spread from their original base in the Byzantine Empire to the Crimean Peninsula from where Lithuanian honcho Vytautas decided to take 383 families home with him. In Trakai, they were later granted freedom of religion and rewarded Vytautas for this gesture by taking on the role of fortress guardians and bodyguards.

The Karaites' native dress also set them apart from traditional Jews. Think ornate flowing robes in bright, intricately patterned silks of red, yellow and blue. Add a Nehru collar, a wide sash belt in a solid contrasting colour and fez-like hats and you have the kind of outfit that might be worn by a rabbi hastily drafted into the Village People. This tiny community – which numbers less than three hundred today – went on to produce some of Lithuania's most noted writers and scientists. Trakai is also dotted with distinctive Karaite architecture which features eaved single-storey wooden homesteads marked by three windows facing the street.

Trakai milks the Karaite connection pretty hard and has managed to reduce twelve centuries of culture and cuisine into a triangular pastie known as
kibinas,
plus
troskinta mesa,
a rich meat and vegetable stew. Both were on my agenda for the evening. A dusk of diluted mauve was settling on the lake as I made my way back into town. Wooden rowboats – each of their three horizontal ribs painted a different hue – bobbed insistently against grassy banks. Blue-black ducks did likewise. The
kibinas
was a bland acquaintanceship of mincemeat and onion in insipidly flaccid pastry while the
troskinta
was unavailable.

For all its Kodak moment beauty, I was not unhappy to leave Trakai the next morning. Even though it was early September, it felt like the place had shut up shop for the season, its prosperity assured until next summer. Like many tourist towns with natural bounty to offer, this one felt a bit half-arsed, as if it knew repeat business was never going to be a concern.

Heading southwest, my next destination was Lithuania's premier spa town, Druskininkai, which abuts the Belarus border. The landscape is one of relentless verdure and with the country's highest point being a mere 293 metres above sea level, its countryside would not disturb the bubbles in a spirit level. Thirty-five per cent of Lithuania's trees are pine, and dense pockets rise from the pastures. In certain places, the road scalpels through forest canyons whose depths are a wall of trunks. It brought to mind Tom Wolfe's
The Painted Word,
in which he described a movement in modern art which aspired to perfect flatness, the victory of texture over signification.

The odd copse, embroidered with lavender and margarine flowers, breaks the pattern and while this is obviously agricultural land, it's difficult to tell what is being grown. Jersey cows munch alone in paddocks, as do chestnut horses with emo fringes falling sadly, irretrievably sadly, across their long faces. Fences and dividing walls are rarely in evidence, necessitating the tethering of all livestock. Weathered wooden barns the colour of corpses sit perhaps 200 metres from the road. Out the front are stacked feed parcels the size of minivans wrapped in white plastic. It's a countryside steeped in torpor. In couverture fields lugubrious families in gumboots harvest potatoes by hand into plastic buckets.

Rural Lithuania is also home to a rather special optical illusion. Because jade is a favourite colour for farmhouses, when viewed from a distance they dissolve into the gauzy greenness at their back door, leaving only their white windows and doors hovering. Few kilometres went by when I didn't thank a force greater than myself that golf course developers had not yet discovered Lithuania. For now at least, I could travel through a landscape not dissimilar to that which Moses did on his way to Africa. No great flight of the imagination is required to envisage this agrarian fecundity – largely unchanged for centuries – being transformed into a ‘resort community' with 36 holes designed by a pro who can't beat Tiger Woods so he has to make his money elsewhere. In some insultingly token gesture, the clubhouse would be decorated by a Milanese designer who Googled ‘Lithuanian architecture' the day before handing in his presentation and the whole shebang would be christened ‘Mafia Links'.

Druskininkai is Lithuania's southernmost town and spreads modestly along the banks of the Nemunas River, which runs slow and tea green. The name derives from the word
druska,
Lithuanian for salt, in recognition of the high saline content of its seven mineral springs. Its first celebrity endorsement came in 1794 from Stanislaw August Poni-atowski, the last man to hold the combined office of King of Poland and Duke of Lithuania. In fact, he was so convinced of the curative properties of the local wet stuff he promulgated a decree to this effect. ‘After a long day of running an empire,' he might have said, ‘I need time for me. And that time is spent is Druskininkai. So bring the wife and kids and don't forget your swimmers because the water's fine.'