Cruisin' thru Kaunas

We put our little car in gear and headed to Kaunas (ko-nus), the second largest city in Lithuania, with about 415,000 people.  We needed to make contact with Elder & Sister Watt who had just arrived there and had been called as Seminary teachers. Now, we believe in modern day miracles but trying to teach a New Testament class when  you don't speak the language might create a few problems...  Antti was the one who said, "Maybe you could go talk to them?"

That was all the excuse Elder Davis needed for a road trip and now we were nearly there!

The roads in Lithuania are very good...one of the few  four lane highways in the Baltic where the speed is 130 km, runs through the country. See? You can pass without having to force someone onto the shoulder. What a treat to drive on a four-lane!

It was a beautiful day and we drove with our windows down enjoying the sun and blue sky. We couldn't pass up a photo stop when we say this darling old brick church.

But all good things must end....and soon we arrived in Kaunas, where potholes are as big as a large dog. No kidding, the biggest potholes we have ever seen were in Kaunas!

And Elder Davis kept jerking the steering wheel to avoid one after the other in the middle of our lanes. We figured we could break an axle if we hit one of those holes wrong. So with great care we drove  to our hotel to check in.

We then went to Elder & Sister Watt's apartment on the other side of town and delivered the Mission Mail to the young missionaries.  All missionary mail comes to the Baltic Mission office in Riga. Whenever anyone is going to another destination in the mission, they are supposed to take the mail that is waiting in the office to be delivered. We were very popular delivering the letters from home to the young Sisters and Elders.

After promising to meet the Watt's the next morning, Elder and Sister Davis headed back to downtown Kaunas, swerving around potholes the whole way back.

Kaunas is a really lovely  town surrounded by forested hills. It was built where two major rivers meet and thus it is hard to navigate easily through town. There are one way streets and dead ends everywhere.  We couldn't have made it without our GPS. 

Kaunas has been invaded by Russia (1655), Sweden (1701) and  Napoleon's Grand Army (1812). The city has also suffered under Nazi and Soviet occupations yet there is a historic charm to the city that led us to want to explore it.

Kaunas had 30,000 Jews at the time of the German invasion of 1941.  They were herded into a ghetto area of Kaunas and most all perished in the camps at Auschwitz, Dachau and Stutthof. The Choral Synagogue has a memorial to the 50,000 Lithuanian Jewish children killed during the Holocaust. The guide book says the altar is one of the most beautiful in the Jewish world but we weren't able to get inside.  Too bad.

Sometimes a map works better than an GPS because we  know where we want to go but don't have an address.  This time we wanted to go through "Old Town".....

And we didn't have time to go to the Kaunas Castle...but we did a get a picture from the parking lot.

And then, across the river we drove to a steep hill, where the Watt's told us was an excellent view of the city.  The funicular wasn't working so we drove to the top.

In case you didn't know, a funicular is a cable car that goes up a steep slope.

The view was great....

Kaunas is a big place!

Our next stop is Napoleon's Hill...

From this tiny but steep hill, Napoleon allegedly watched his Grand Army of 690,000 troops cross the river into Russia at the start of his attack on the Russian Empire in 1812.  Our car, at then end of the path gives you some perspective of how steep it is.

And this is the view that Napoleon had...if he really was on this hill!.

After all that climbing, two senior missionaries were tired.  We had more exploring to do with the Watts the next day and we needed our....

beauty sleep!