Greetings from Lithuania!

It was a very long week, obviously since I'm writing this
three days later than normal.  Much has happened.

The big news was the trip to Kaliningrad.  I went with 
Ted (retired Toronto police superintendant) and his wife Alice,
Gordon (business department head from Tulsa U) and his wife 
Catherine, Marg (retired RN from Ontario), Robertas (LCC staff)
as an interpreter, and a Lithuanian driver who didn't speak
English.  Our original guide, Victor, had to work unexpectedly
so his wife, Regina an opthamologist, became our guide.  So
we had nine people, three Canadian, three Lithuanian, three
American.  Plus, we picked up a Russian in Kaliningrad as
a tour guide.  All in a Ford minivan.

We left at 6:30am Saturday morning to catch the 7am ferry
across to the spit, and then drove two hours down the spit
to get to Kaliningrad.  The border crossing was uneventful.
The Russian side was downright opulent.  It had just recently
been built and featured red roofs and a fancy duty free shop.
It was promptly dubbed Customs World, an international theme park.
Ted was great.  He can absorb information faster than anybody
else I know, and is incredibly friendly.  He carries around
a supply of small Canadian flag pins, and is always passing them
out to people that he meets.  

This would come back to haunt him later.

We arrive in Kaliningrad at 11am, and picked up our Russian guide.
He was a historian, and the son of a political prisoner.  His
parents had met in 1950 on Franz Josef Island, latitude 87(!)
while working on Stalin's nuclear program.  We had to go through
town to the southern railway station to register our presence
to the authorities, or the tourism bureau.  Apparently this
was news to the tourism bureau because they were insistent
that we didn't need our visas stamped.  Regina was equally 
insistent, just in case our hotel wouldn't accept the unstamped
visas.  Apparently our presence and our border stamped visas
might not be enough to convince the hotel that we were actually
there.  It was a holdover from the Soviet system.  

The tourism folk were pretty friendly.  The militia was not.
The militia operate as a sort of paramilitary state police 
sharing the functions of state police and National Guards here.
One of them waved us over while we were driving past him,
solely on the basis of our Lithuanian plates.  He gave us a 
once over, and then handed our driver a ticket for having 
too many passengers in the back seat.

The city itself is in transition.  There are signs of commercial
life around.  Literally.  One apartment building has a large
"Kenwood" stereo sign on top of it.  There were lots of little
shops similar to Klaipeda shops around, and the kiosks selling
drinks, or magazines, or snacks, are pretty ubiquitous.  I got
the general impression that the city was about five years behind
Klaipeda.

In other respects, Kaliningrad is ages behind.  Both cities were
East Prussian cities, but while Klaipeda/Memel got enough 
comparatively lightly from the Soviet attacks in 1945, 
Kalingrad/Konigsberg was completely devastated, both by the
final assault in April, '45, but also by strategic bombing
campaigns.  Little is left of the old town in Kaliningrad.
The town was the original capital of Prussia.  Konigsberg
is German for "King's Fort".  The castle is gone--its ruins
demolished finally in the 60's to make way for a modern
multistory office building.  The latter had an inadequate
foundation and has been sinking slowly into the King's Hill.
The cathedral is being restored now, and the roof should be
finished in a few more months.  The cathedral's clock tower
is done, and startled us on Sunday by chiming the hour.

All the rest of the old town was annihilated.  What the 
Soviets put up instead of the neat Prussian townhouses were
apartment buildings.  Some of the most aggressively ugly
apartment buildings known to man.  Kaliningrad is Russian
for Cabrini Green.  Our guide told us that the Soviets had
a choice between building buildings that would last 20 years
or 60 years.  They opted for 20 year buildings, but people
are still living in them today.  I can understand why Germans
who come back are so shocked by what happened here, because
the Soviets have ruined the town.  There were at most four
buildings in the town that I liked.  All but one were restored
Prussian designs, the last was an apartment building built
by East Germans.

Oddly, what survived the Soviet assault the best were the
old fortifications.  The city walls still exist, though
they are in disrepair.  One of the forts along the wall has
become the Amber Museum, displaying works of art in amber.
The crown prince's castle has become a commercial area, with
its muddy courtyard the delivery area.

Saturday afternoon we took a walking tour of part of
the wall, and also went toured the ex-Soviet exploration
ship Vytatz III, which is part of an oceanographic museum.
We also went through the Amber Museum, very quickly.  That
was another classic.  They let us in, but wanted us to
leave quickly so they could go home.  The souvenir shop
in the museum was privately run so there was nearly a
conflict between the museum guards who wanted us to leave
and the shop owner who wanted us to stay and buy.  The
museum was closing early because Sunday was a holiday--
the Day of the Woman.  Everybody working at the Amber
Museum was female.  

I bought an amber tie clasp for 30,000 rubles.  Or 30 rubles.  
Russia is revaluating their currency by moving the decimal
place 3 to the left.  So I had 1,000 ruble notes and 1 ruble
coins, both worth the same amount.  The exchange rate
was around 5600 (5.6) to $1.

After that we went to the hotel.  The accomodations were
ok.  It was unexpected to see the signs in the lobby
in German and English in addition to Russian.  Somebody
is expecting tourists.  We had trouble finding a restaurant
to eat at because of the holiday crowds, but located a place
that wasn't busy.  It also offered a picture menu, and
for entertainment had TVs showing a top 80 music video hit
parade.  Whose top 80, I don't know, but most of the videos
were US, including the video for the theme from the movie
_Titanic_.

The Cyrillic for Cafe is Ka[phi]e, which actually makes sense
if you can recognize the Greek character phi.  It was very
intimidating trying to work out what the signs were saying
in a different alphabet, but at least once I'd worked out
the transliterations I had a shot at understanding the
words.  Remind me not to go to Japan.

Oh, I had a chicken shiskebab, and peaches and cream for
dessert.  Pretty good, and the waitress provided good service.

The Day of the Woman, we were originally going to go to the
Museum of History, but it was open as early as our guide
thought, so we walked down the hill, past the WWII Navy
monument (featuring a Soviet Navy PT boat) to the old
cathedral.  The cathedral's guides showed us what progress
had been made in the completed front of the cathedral, and
what remained to be done in the sanctuary itself.  While
we were there, two set of Russian military came through,
which prompted another round of Ted's flag pin diplomacy.
He is really gifted at making friends across cultural barriers.
He had me take a picture of him with the first batch, from
the Russian Navy.

I have one of his pins on my trench coat now.

The island that the cathedral stands on used to have 90 houses
on it.  The cathedral is the only structure left.  There
were seven bridges in Konigsberg which together formed a
famous problem--how to cross all seven without crossing
any twice.  Four are left now, only one in original
condition (sorry, Tim). 

After the cathedral we went back to the History Museum.
First floor was more of a natural museum.  Second floor
covered the Prussians and Germans.  Third floor was 
dedicated to WWII and the Soviet conquest of Konigsberg,
including a large sandtable illustrating Soviet tactics.
Third floor also had an area dedicated to Soviet achievement.
Fourth floor was an art museum.

Kaliningrad is one of the last places to go to see a
still standing statue of Lenin.  The museum had a scale
model (still 10 feet tall!) but wanted to charge me 10000
rubles to have a picture taken in front of it.  Oh well.

We left Kaliningrad about 2pm since Marg and I had to be
back for octet practice at 6.  Regina didn't quite
understand the urgency I was feeling, and kept wanting
to know whether we wanted to stop for tea.  I was worried
about missing the 5:15 ferry.  We made it barely.

The problem was at the border.  On the Russian side, you
pull up to a little toll booth structure to receive a
piece of paper with the number of people inside the
vehicle.  Then you go to the main customs and immigration
building, and get out of the vehicle to walk up to the
immigration officer.  The guy on duty Sunday was the same guy
who was there Saturday, and he remembered Ted.  The other
guy on duty also wanted a Canada pin, and one thing led
to another, and one of the two wound up cutting off one
of his border service badges off of his uniform to give
to Ted.  We all get back into the van and head to the
checkpoint to leave the area.  The man on duty there told
us that we had to go back to the main area.  We thought that
maybe our border service friend was in trouble and needed
his badge back.  Nope.  Instead the head guy invited Ted
into the customs building for a drink to celebrate
the Day of the Woman.  It was a vodka martini.  Ted doesn't
drink, but knows when to take one for the good of the service.
Robertas was there to help out, too, for moral support.

I was very glad I had a chance to go to Kaliningrad.  I
desperately needed a break because things weren't going
too well and I was getting discouraged.  

But this email is getting rather long, so I'll have to 
write another one later.

Yours in Christ,
David