Siauliai, Lithuania

Vilnius had really made an impression on me. It was tiny for a capital, and quiet too at this time of year at least, but it had enough bubbling life about it to make it an interesting destination. I needed to push on northwards, but I hoped to return to Vilnius; it seemed like a great place to settle.

The glossy sheen on the city was scratched once more at the station, where two railway guards were hassling some homeless people who had taken up residence on the benches, at first shouting and pushing them, then slapping them round the heads. I stayed away from the scuffles and grabbed a ticket and seat reservation onwards to a little-known town called Siauliai to the north-west.

My shoulders sank as I boarded the train and found my compartment, which was sweltering and already filled with five other people. It was going to be a terrible journey, I thought, as I pulled out my guidebook to read up on my destination.

“You’re going to Siauliai?” an accented voice next to me piped up. It belonged to a young bearded Lithuanian chap next to me who it turned out was an ecology student at Vilnius University, off back home for the holidays. He was very friendly and we chatted for the whole of the journey mainly about Lithuania and travel (he had just returned from a hitchhiking trip across Spain). Soon we were swapping cameras and talking through the sights we had seen. The girl opposite the chap spoke up too, as did the older chap with the impressive moustache opposite me, and soon cameras were circling around the whole carriage and questions in Lithuanian and English were flying about! The two-and-a-half journey to Siauliai flew by as a result, and I was sad to see my newly-made friends, many of whom had a strong command of facial hair, continue on their journeys as I saddled up to hop onto the platform at Siauliai.

My fly-by-wire approach to travel continued as I realised I had arrived in a new town after dark without a map, and there wasn’t one on display anywhere around the area of the station. An easy way out would’ve been to grab a “taksi” – except, er, there weren’t any. Putting my Sherlock Holmes hat on – literally – I noted the direction most people were going in, and the direction that looked the most lit, and saw they were luckily the same. I hit a main road and wandered in the direction of what I felt was civilisation keeping my eyes peeled at the sidestreets for the road on which the Siauliai youth hostel was situated. I kept wandering for some time, past restaurants, a cinema complex and a green area with a clock tower, before looking up and realising the road I was wandering down was in fact the one on which my hostel was located and that it was just a couple of blocks ahead. Who needs maps when you have, er, blind luck?

The address seemed to be primarily a university faculty building, but it also had a small sign propped up advertising it as the Youth Hostel. It looked to be an old hall of residence. I performed a silent play with the administrator of the building and landed my very own university dorm room for the night for less than seven quid.

The next day I rose at an un-studentlike early hour after a beautiful sleep and wandered down to the bus station to take a local bus out of town. Roughly ten kilometres along a road passing through the Lithuanian countryside I got up from my seat and made my way to the front.

“Zwei kilometer rechts,” the bus driver said to me in German for some reason, jabbing a finger at a patch of woodland. I sneezed at him – “achiu” – and got off the bus, setting off down the track he had indicated, the entrance of which was marked with a solitary cross.

Eventually I saw a mass on the horizon loom into view. a wooded mound from which a number of things were protruding. As I got closer I could finally make it out: the Hill of Crosses.

The moment I read an unassuming short paragraph about the Hill of Crosses in my guidebook, I knew I had to see it for my own eyes. The mound was an old hill fort on which locals started placing crosses sometime in the 19th century as remembrance for those who died in uprisings against the Russian Empire. After the Red Revolution, the area held its significance as a symbol of rebellion as well as gaining increased significance as a religious site in contrast to the Godless Soviet occupiers. Aware of the power the site had amongst locals, the Soviets bulldozed it a number of times, driving the crosses into the ground, but locals kept returning tirelessly to replenish the site with even more crosses than before.

Whilst I don’t know or care much of spiritualism, reading about this act of stubborn determination in the face of adversity really caught my interest, and here I was to see it for my own eyes, out in the middle of nowhere with not a soul to be seen (including my own). I followed the path up and round the hill to study the crosses in more detail. The place was thick with them. The number of ornately-carved lifesize crosses and statues of the Big J was impressive indeed. Many were dedicated to people, and had come from all over the globe, adorned by such slogans as “WORLD PILGRIMAGE – QUEENSLAND 2004″, which I reckon they certainly would’ve had to pay excess baggage for on Qantas.

When the wind picked up the crosses and prayer beads jangled in the wind, and I shuddered. Whilst I could see the power the site might have over a believer, to me it felt quite eerie to be in amongst so many instruments of torture, so I made my way onwards – but very glad to have spent time at such a unique site.