I took too many pictures today. Because I came across two impressive sights - one of them was planned, the other was not.
The planned one was the hill of crosses, which is surprisingly a hill covered with crosses. About 200.000 of them. And every day pilgrims add more. It is quite an important pilgrimage site. When I was there several bussloads of pilgrims and tourists from different countries where there with me. Even though it was quite crowded it is impressive - the crosses come in all sizes and materials and every now and then there are beautiful pieces of art amongst them.
Once I moved on I stumbled upon the unplanned sight, somehow the pagan counterpart to the hill of crosses: an open air museum of baltic gods in a village called Naisiai. Noone there except some locals buying beer in the shop nearby and me. Very interesting place - for a long time there has been a distinct baltic culture which is very different from the surrounding slavic and germanic cultures. The museum was basically a path along wooden statues with lithuanian/english explanations. I took my time to see them all. Some attributes reminded me of Germanic, Greek or Roman gods or figures from fairytales, but most of them were very distinct. This museum is a beautiful project, too bad that noone seems to go there.
For the rest of the day I had to cycle fast, I wanted to reach Latvia today - and I made it. And I got good news: now it is for sure, I will have a visitor in Riga who will join us on the way to Helsinki :o)
No comments:
Post a Comment