Louise and I arrived in Warsaw today after a marvellous tour of the Suwalki region and Vilnius in Lithuania. Our base of operations was our friend Ela Pietras' little farmhouse in the village of Mackowa Ruda on the Czarna Hancza river. The setting is lovely rolling countryside with many lakes and forests. Her place is right in the Wigry National Park and very is very peaceful because it is so isolated from the nearest neighbours. This time of year the nights are very short and there is twilight at midnight.
We spent three days in Vilnius with Ela's friend Ola, a delightful person with a truckload of enthusiasm for life. She says that she is now making up for the 50 years of her life that she was not allowed to live fully during the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. We started by visiting the Vilnius Jewish Museum where she works, we we learned about the part of the city's history which tragically can never be brought back to life. Otherwise, Vilnius is a beautiful, vibrant city with a spectacular setting among a series of hills. Its baroque architecture is probably the best to be found north of the Alps, and the historic city center is every bit as charming and mysterious as the heart of Seville, except with a north European flavour. Much of Vilnius has been carefully restored after decades of neglect and vandalism by the Soviets, yet there are still places where you can see elements of the city that have been untouched except by wear and decay since WWII. I'm not saying any more because I don't want to start a tourism stampede, but remember, you heard it here first - Vilnius is one cool place.
Back in Mackowa Ruda we kayaked down a stretch of the Czarna Hancza, and last night we all stripped down for a good old fashioned 'Banya', a kind of sauna in a a little one-roomed log house equipped with benches and a huge pile of hot stones. The owner heats them with a fire for half a day, and when the fire goes out, you go in, with buckets of water and bunches of birch fronds. Throw water on the rocks and you start to sweat in no time. When you can't take the heat and sweat any longer you wrap yourself in a towel and run out the door and down to river, into whose cool clear water you jump and then you experience a little bit of heaven. Back and forth between banya and river for about two hours, and your body is purified and you feel rapture, and if you are like me, on holidays, with the prospect of having to return to work soon, you probably say, "Please, God, let me stay here forever, just like this".
Today was the first step on the road back to reality - a six hour train ride from Suwalki to Warsaw for 24 hours of looting and pillaging, on to Czestochowa to see the fam, then for a final episode of country life in Kaszowo near Milicz, where we are heading for the christening of our friends' Irek's and Daria's newest child, born a few months ago, a complete surprise for a 40 some mother with another daughter who is already 24 years old. After the weekend it's on to Wroclaw to catch our plane back to Canada.
So far I have taken about 650 photographs, but don't worry, you are only going to see the best of them when I get back and have time for a bit of editing.
Take care, everyone. Stand firm, London, we are all with you.
