I walked in my Grandmothers Footsteps...

I'm spending the month of July in Klaipeda, Lithuania and

I will be blogging the experience. Some posts will be intentional but a lot of it will be stream of consciousness. I chalk up any terrible culturally insensitive things I may say to jetlag. Enjoy the journey with me!!

The other day I visited the village of Kretinga. Kretinga is a small town. For once, this isn't deceptively so. Most "small towns" in Lithuania aren't. This fact comes mainly from the still very high population density. Most people still live in Soviet era apartments, which while they look extremely decrepit are actually very nice. The buildings are run like co-ops so any

cosmetic work falls to the wayside until it becomes unbearable. Residents won't collectively shell out the money otherwise.

HOWEVER, I digress. I went to Kretinga this past weekend. Kretinga is the childhood home of my Grandmother. She didn't grow up in town, but lived in the farmlands surrounding the city. I wasn't able to make any prior contact so I arrived in town under the radar and not really knowing ANYTHING about Kretinga or my grandmothers relationship to it. This visit was the bare minimum of "ancestral exploration." I was shoved into it very enthusiastically by Kel, a man from New Zealand (with very red hair)

who currently lives in Klaipeda. He was adamant that I needed to visit Kretinga and was also very disappointed that I hadn't done more homework. The difficult thing about trying to connect ancestral dots is that in all the regime change and government turnover, centralized records can be hard to find. I would have needed to really dig in advance, and now that I know the country a little better, there isn't much keeping me from potentially coming back.

I wouldn't say that the ghost of my Grandmother walked before, it wasn't that emotional or visceral. However, I was able to imagine her walking down some of the same broad thoroughfares that I did. I found an evangelical lutheran church, which was her denomination. For all I know she might have attended it. ....I have to admit this doesn't sound like the deep and emotional

narrative one would expect with visiting a very important piece of my personal history. Though I suppose to a certain extent history is like that sometimes. Routinely the most mundane things end up being meaningful. I don't mean to imply that Kretinga is mundane, or my grandmothers life was mundane for that matter. Far from it...the woman worked two night jobs and raised two boys in inner city chicago...alone. This of course, was AFTER being ripped from her home to forcibly work for the Germans in a labor camp. History, while extremely important and significant usually lacks that cinematic quality we like to impose upon it.

History grounds individuals and societies. There is an implicit understanding that with an understanding of history comes a greater understanding of how each of us is connected to a narrative that is bigger than ourselves. This point was driven home for me especially while walking around Kretinga. My life is very much the product of intentional and unintentional choices made by others. And their life comes from the same cascading reality. Life has a tendency to bubble forth like a pot of noodles you shouldn't have covered while boiling. History can help us make sense of Life's randomness. It can help draw some contours and give shape to something that might have originally been thought to be formless and amoeboid.

I wish more of my friends had an opportunity to walk in the footsteps of their ancestors. My generation has known nothing but rapid social and technological change. Few other generations in history have witnessed the sorts of transformations I seem to bump into every 4 years or so. We're an unsentimental lot, but that doesn't mean we can't connect to a larger narrative or an older and subtly relevant time. I'm very glad that I visited Kretinga. You can see more pictures of it here.

Why The Hill Of Crosses is Cooler Than It Sounds

I'm spending the month of July in Klaipeda, Lithuania and I will be blogging the experience. Some posts will be intentional but a lot of it will be stream of consciousness. I chalk up any terrible culturally insensitive things I may say to jetlag. Enjoy the journey with me!!

Imagine that your entire life you feel the identity you've been given is wrong. You spend your days being educated under one system that drills you constantly on what your supposed to be. You learn one common language, you learn one common history, you're told that the world is supposed to look and act a specific way.

Imagine you had a nagging suspicion that this world wasn't right. No matter how often the authority figures around you assured you that this is the way things should be, YOU feel that its not right. Perhaps the more you try and push against the way your told this world should be the more resistance you get. Friends begin to reject you, teachers begin to eye you warily, people you trust whisper that if you don't stop thinking the way your thinking you might be shunned. That job your supposed to get might disappear. But you don't care, and you're desperate to find a way to express your rejection of this reality boldly and evocatively. Your tired of the suffocating existence this world forces you to accept.

You begin to hear rumors of a place...a place that passionately and clearly declares that this reality is

a sham. A place that claims this reality holds no exclusivity over anyone's existence. Wouldn't you want to find this place? Wouldn't you want to do something to participate in the revolutionary statement it made?

This scenario is the basic story of "The Hill of Crosses." No one really knows exactly how it was started. There's a few stories that go back to 1850. Originally it was believed that the son of a local merchant promised to plant a cross on a hill outside of Šiauliai. When the boy was healed, he obliged his promise.

Lithuania, through much of its history, has fought constantly for cultural relevance. First the Poles, and then the Russians worked hard to absorb Lithuania. While the Poles favored language dominance and reserving good land for Polish nobility, the Russians had a tendency to ship anybody who complained too loudly off to Siberia. Lithuanian culture was continually struggling for its own survival. After the failed Lithuanian insurrection against Russia in the 1860s more crosses began to appear.

The Hill of Crosses gained new relevance during the Soviet occupation. The Soviets deported the Lithuanian population in earnest. Schools were set up to erase the Lithuanian language and culture, and Russian transmigrants were flooded into the country in an effort to overwhelm the natives. In 1961 the Hill of Crosses was labeled an undesirable place by the communist party and bulldozed. Still...the crosses kept returning and it was bulldozed several times over the next 2 decades.

The Hill of Crosses is an incredible reminder that belief matters. To quote Rob Bell, "....some things are true, but some things are TRUE." There may be forces or circumstances that continually reinforce the idea that this reality is all you have, or that things, no matter how hopeless can never change. But this reality pales in comparison to the signs of reality just beneath the surface of life. The Hill of Crosses, in its proper context is a stark reminder and a peephole into that truth.

More pictures of the hill of crosses can be found here.

The First Thing I do When I Get Back to America...

I'm spending the month of July in Klaipeda, Lithuania and I will be blogging the experience. Some posts will be intentional but a lot of it will be stream of consciousness. I chalk up any terrible culturally insensitive things I may say to jetlag. Enjoy the journey with me!!

......find a decent Chinese restaurant and get order something with a heavy sauce.

I think I may be going through culture shock. Today a colleague and I went to a chinese restaurant in Klaipeda. We had been told by some locals that the food was really good, and that it was pretty authentic. While the food in LT is overall REALLY good, generally fresh ingredients, low sodium, and cheap...sometimes I still crave good old fatty and SALTY U.S. cuisine. I thought it would be cheese burgers, but lately I'v

e really desired a taco or chinese.

SO, I was extatic, but to make a long story short I was strongly disappointed. Not only was the food extremely expensive (given the regular prices) but there were pickles in the stir fry...yes...pickles. Need I say more?

All that to say that when I return to America I am going to find the nearest, slightly dodgy, greasy chinese restaurant I can find and I am going to eat an entire order of Beef w/Broccoli all on my own...with extra white rice....and a ginger ale....

...mmmmmm.

P.S. I have started using Google+ (its pretty awesome) and have created a picture album...because I somehow forgot that I have a mac, which can do just about anything involving the word media. Find the album here.

Klaipeda

I'm spending the month of July in Klaipeda, Lithuania and I will be blogging the experience. Some posts will be intentional but a lot of it will be stream of consciousness. I chalk up any terrible culturally insensitive things I may say to jetlag. Enjoy the journey with me!!

So. I have another confession. I forgot to pack the usb cable that connects my camera to my computer. This means that any lovely pictures I've taken won't be able to be seen until I get back to the states.

...I also know this may cut my readership permanently in half.

KLAIPEDA

I've now been in Klaipeda, LT 4 days. While it hasn't felt like its been that long, the speed of the days is only going to increase. Tomorrow students arrive at LCC and each and every one of them gets packed into every available bed in the hall I'm helping manage.

It's been quite a journey so far. Klaipeda is a nice town. Its deceptively large. In this area of Eastern Europe (I can't speak for everywhere) most families still live in the Soviet era tenement that their parents or grandparents were given. A town that covers the area of a 25,000 person city in the US houses over 200,000. Whats interesting is that while the outside of many of these buildings look very eroded, some of the apartments must be VERY nice. I've passed one to many Beemers and Benzes to believe that those are simply the vehicles of the people that run the place. It's an odd juxtaposition.

Mostly a port and tourist town, Klaipeda was rebuilt by the Soviets as a military base and somewhat of a tourist/vacation spot. The oldtown has some very ancient buildings, but you can tell most of them were rebuilt a few decades ago. Still the town gives off that southern florida vibe that things are busy when the tourists are in town, but are probably pretty sleepy the rest of the time.

Lithuania, and Eastern Europe in general has slowly started growing on me. I think those of us in the U.S. forget how extravagently wealthy we are. I don't mean this in the typical "we're a bunch of greedy capitalists that only care about stuff" way. The U.S. social environment is filled with businesses and market oriented enterprises designed to find every obscure and conceivable way to make the U.S. citizen part with his money. Its striking how WELL these enterprises do. While Lithuania is oriented around a market economy, that well oiled- pristinely designed undercurrent isn't there. People who only use public transportation and people who own BMWs use the same beaches and eat at the same restaurants with the chipped paint on the exterior. (The food is AMAZING here btw....seriously, its mostly cheap and very well made)

Lithuania has a surprisingly unstratified culture, which is something you CANNOT say anymore about America. I only have to go as far as Benton Harbor vs. St. Joe in MI to see how true this is. This isn't to say that it doesn't have a dark underbelly...because this country does...alcohol abuse is pervasive, homelessness is a serious issue and there are some parts of the city I've been told to stay away from entirely, but above that undercrust things don't shatter so completely...most Lithuanians have a remarkably common experience of life.

So...a few fun and interesting observations:

-Bicycles have a designated part of the sidewalk and they USE it. Bikes definitely have the right of way and I've almost been flattened a lot.

-Europeans really do like speedos...

-Waiters will only bring you a bill when you've asked for it, and your allowed to seat yourself. Seriously, you could sit there for hours and they won't do a thing until you track them down.

-Nobody speaks 1 language...we Americans are pretty helpless in this regard

-If you every come to Lithuania get the Kepta Duona...its this amazing combination of rye bread, garlic, cheese, and a deep frier...completely fatal in high doses but incredibly good