It's funny the tricks our minds play on us, especially when it comes to geography. Who would ever have thought, for example, that the centre of Europe lies 25 kilometres north of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania? The truth is that we're so accustomed to a distorted mental map of the Continent, where things get quite fuzzy east of a line from Berlin to Prague, that such a thing would never have occurred to us.
It was in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall was breached, that the French National Geographic Institute calculated the location of the centre of Europe, measuring from the Atlantic to the Urals and from the Arctic tip of Norway to Crete (or was it Cyprus?). But though the Lithuanians are proud to have it, they haven't yet raised the money for a proper monument, so the centre of Europe is marked only by "a miserable pile of stones."
The phrase is used by the writers of a remarkable guidebook, Vilnius In Your Pocket, now celebrating its sixth anniversary. What makes this official guide to Lithuania's capital so remarkable is its irreverence and laconic sense of humour. And because it's in an A5-sized magazine format, all the information it contains can be updated bi-monthly.
Outdoor museum
Already, as it notes, there is an outdoor museum to celebrate the centre of Europe though, curiously, this is located 17 kilometres away from the actual spot. Called Europos Parkas, it contains a series of "fun and funky" sculptures created by artists from all over the world. Vilnius In Your Pocket first appeared in May 1992, with a cover photograph of Lenin departing from Lukiskiu Square in the city centre. "It was filled with information on queuing and exchange rates and warnings about mean doormen, locked doors, expected shortages and disappointing hotels", the editors recall. "Today, we can hardly remember such a past." The city now has lots of good hotels and restaurants in every price bracket, including the inevitable chain of McDonalds - Big Macs for 6 litas, or £1 - and equally ubiquitous Irish pub, "The Twins O'Brien". I ate at Freskos, in the neo-classical City Hall, paying just 60 litas - a tenner, in our terms - for a delicious lunch (vegetable soup, strips of veal in mustard cream sauce, two glasses of wine and coffee).
I had gone to Lithuania for a wedding - Dubliner Brian McSharry, a civil servant turned consultant, was marrying the beautiful Benedikta Jarulyte, who comes from Zagare, a small town just one kilometre south of the Latvian border. And after going through the church and civil ceremonies, they had to throw themselves into all sorts of fun and games (he had to split a log in two, for example).
The bride and groom and guests were taken to the Hill of Crosses, near the industrial town of Siauliai, where the Pope celebrated Mass in September 1993. His podium is still there alongside a tiny hill covered in countless thousands of crosses, many of them commemorating the 250,000 Lithuanians deported to Siberia by Stalin in 1941, after their country was absorbed into the Soviet Union against its will.
Potent symbol
It is a bizarre monument to nationalism and religious fervour. Lithuania was the last country in Europe to be Christianised (as late as 1420) and the Hill of Crosses was originally fortified by its then pagan inhabitants to protect them against the crusading Teutonic Knights. But despite attempts by the Communists to sweep it all away, the hill remained a potent symbol of Lithuanian resistance.
This is also reflected in the country's national days. January 13th, Defenders of Freedom Day, commemorates the 14 peaceful protesters killed when Soviet tanks stormed the Vilnius TV tower in 1991. June 14th, the Day of Mourning and Hope, marks the start of Stalin's deportations in 1941, and August 23rd is Black Ribbon Day, to remember the MolotovRibbentrop pact which gave him the Baltic states.
In Vilnius, you can visit the grim KGB prison, which occupies the basement of a large 19th century building on Gedimono, the main street. Now the Museum of Genocide Victims, this is where thousands of Lithuanians were interrogated before being dispatched to Siberia or to summary execution, their bodies buried in mass graves. At the height of it, cells designed for two were packed with up to 20 prisoners.
A middle-aged American was meticulously recording the chilling horror of it all with a video camera, giving a running commentary as he moved from cell to cell. I felt like going up to ask him had he ever visited Death Row, at home in the United States, and what did he think about lethal injections and electric chairs. But he was probably too steeped in the "good guy/bad guy" culture even to think about it.
Lithuania is the largest of the three former Soviet republics on the Baltic, with 3.7 million people (81 per cent of them Lithuanian) and a land area about twice the size of Belgium. Russians and Poles are the largest minorities, with many of them living in Vilnius. Its Polish-speaking Catholics could be seen flooding out of the flamboyant rococo Church of the Holy Spirit on Dominikonou after Sunday Mass.
Vacant sites
Though the Old Town of Vilnius has been designated as a World Heritage Site, it is not as pretty or intact as the Estonian capital, Tallinn. There are too many vacant sites and hideous infill buildings from the late-Soviet period peppered among its 18th and 19th century architecture and very few survivors from earlier times. But it still succeeds in being a quite charming capital city.
Vilnius In Your Pocket provides an almost blow-by-blow account of the main political developments before and after Lithuania re-established its independence in 1991. It even notes that a one-time prime minister was dismissed in 1996 after it emerged that he had withdrawn savings worth 33,790 US dollars from a bank just two days before it went bust. Shades of the Ansbacher Deposits?
VIYP was founded by four enterprising young men - three Belgian brothers and a German journalist - at a time when Vilnius "didn't even have a proper telephone book, let alone restaurants that served more than one dish". And, since they "hatched the wild idea to pocket Vilnius", it became such a publishing sensation that they've gone on to do the same for Tallinn, Riga, Minsk and Kaliningrad.
The latest survey found that four per cent of those who read VIYP were Irish - double the figure for Danes, Swedes, French, Italians and Icelanders. (Yes, they're big in Vilnius because they were the first to recognise Lithuania's independence, even before the Soviets agreed to pull out). Two per cent of the readers admitted that they had ended up in Vilnius because of "an accident in misreading the train schedule."