Yesterday was Vėlinės, All Soul’s Day, in Lithuania. Every person in this country goes to the cemeteries on November 1st to clean, and place flowers and candles on the gravestones. You can imagine the traffic jams at the cemeteries as people drive from near and far. I joined my mother and her friends to visit the Biržai region, in the north of the country. It was a three hour drive in the chilly fog to get there. Along the way I got to hear some history. Always there is talk of the grand days when this country reached to the Black Sea, and was one of the great powers of Europe. There was one king Jogaila and he had several sons. One of the sons was Vadiclovas and he was sent to be the king of some state in Russia. He had a battle against the tartars and in that battle he was the leader. He disappeared and nobody found his body, and nobody knew what happened to him. Apparently he ended up traveling and fathered several children along the way. Christopher Columbus was one of his sons. It is also that clear that basketball originated here. (The national passion here is basketball). People are very patriotic and proud, and the history is rich.
The cemetery we visited was in a little village called Kupreliškis. Imagine a village where most of the people have left. Abandoned houses, and farms. All the remaining people know someone who has moved to the UK, or at least to Vilnius. All the older generation has gone through some type of suffering, through wars, and communism, and then the new struggles of capitalism. There is no work to do, and it is not profitable to be a small scale farmer. These people have been forgotten and somehow left behind, as if nothing has changed since the 1990’s and independence. We visited some relatives, who were gracious hosts, serving us their best cakes and foods. It is clear that they don’t have much.
The next stop was the town of Biržai, which has a castle that was destroyed by Swedes in 1704, and then only recently reconstructed. Lovely mushroom dumplings in the cellar restaurant. Then on to another cemetary and another visit to some more friends’ relatives. Again, with tea and hearing about how the husband worked in Scotland for 6 years, but doesn’t speak a word of English, because he only worked and stayed with Lithuanians. These people live in an old Soviet style block apartment.
Then returning to Vilnius, in the dark along the way, all the cemeteries glowing with candles. Strong traditions in a small country.
