"Summer is over, but only for those who don't have a car or
are too lazy to get up early. However, some places - Varėna, Marcinkonys,
Zervynai, Valkininkai - can be reached by a comfortable train from Vilnius. Not
very comfortable and infrequent buses will take you elsewhere.
This year, a new habit has appeared in my life: I get up
before five, I leave Vilnius Naujamiestis before six, and we go about one hundred kilometers with the puppy
for a big morning walk to Dzūkija.
I drink one coffee on the way, I buy another in Varėna, at
the gas station, on the way I listen to audiobooks or documentaries for an hour
and a half, and after seven, I am already in an empty, ethnographic, clean and
perfect paradise without bicycles, without scooters - a national park, old
huts, crosses with aprons and endless paths through forests. The cleanest
rivers and streams in Lithuania, and in autumn - mushrooms that the locals will
have collected for you.
What to visit? There is so much in Dzūkija that I will
mention only a few places that are important to me - and you (I have no doubt)
will mention what I have unforgivably missed. When you are a writer, you can
definitely add those places to your list.
1. Zervynos is the place that is the diamond of Lithuania
and even if you only want to visit one place in Dzūkija, it should be this
extraordinary, perfectly preserved, unchanged (except for the electric wires)
street village on the cold Ūla river. In Soviet times, they filmed the most
famous Lithuanian film of all time "Nobody Wanted to Die"
there, which was very ideologically ugly (it showed the good Soviets and
terrible Lithuanian partisans) and very aesthetic cinematographically.
2. Veisiejai (in the Lazdijai district), a town with only a
few thousand inhabitants, has enough heritage to take a whole day of
photography. My friend and the most famous Lithuanian dzūkas, journalist Romas
Sadauskas-Kvietkevičius, constantly writes about the town.
3. Marcinkonys is a huge village (in terms of size it could
be a town, it's just scattered among the woods) with a great old yellow wooden
church. In its surroundings there are a number of well-maintained nature trails
(two start directly from the modern and luxurious visitor center) and a bog
called Meškos Šikna, which is fantastically popular with visitors and they
willingly take pictures at the road sign. Marcinkonys is the last railway
station on the railway line from Vilnius. Behind it on the way to Belarus (Parieče)
there were still three railway stations, but now that section is overgrown with
trees and grass, and the connection ends in Marcinkonys.
Marcinkonys even has an equipped beach with a changing
cabin, toilets, benches and a parking lot - by Kastinis lake. This is more than
other Lithuanian villages can boast. The beach of Kastinis is, of course,
smaller than the one near another well-known village in Lithuania, Šiauliai: as
you know, it is Bubius pond that is the favorite recreational spot of the famous
Budulis for bier, shashlykiuks and girls.
4. Čepkelių raistas, a few kilometers from Marcinkonys, is
the largest area of wild nature in Lithuania. It is closed to visitors in the
spring, when the birds nest there, and mushroom picking is only available to
local residents of the surrounding villages. Come before dawn, when there's no
one there but me with the dog. Reminds me of Yellowstone National Park in the
US or a place where ghost movies are filmed. Another planet.
5. Tree beekeeping educational trail, the best hidden and
poorly advertised trail in Lithuania, is not included in international hiking
trail catalogs, so it is not visible in almost any hiking apps (I use
AllTrails). The old beehives, dug out of trees (dzukish - drave) are arranged and
protected from the rain. The bees don't live there anymore. The trail is
imperfectly marked, so it is intended for more experienced hikers who are not
afraid of getting lost and know how to find their way back with the help of a
compass (navigation does not work because there is no mobile signal). Between
the villages of Marcinkonių and Musteika.
6. Senovė is a village with a strange romantic name, where
there is the last non-working railway station on the territory of Lithuania. As
you continue along the old railway track, you will soon come to a sign that you
must not go further without the permission of the border guards, and you can
see the fence that marks the end of NATO and the European Union.
7. Kapiniškiai - a beautiful village with a sad name (yes,
it comes from the word cemetery), the cleanest and coldest stream in Lithuania,
Skroblus, flows through it (the water there is clearer and cleaner than Evian's
mineral water or water from your tap), which originates in the neighboring
village of Margioniai - the source is under the politically incorrect name
"Old Women's Garden".
8. New Valkininkai (formerly Valkininkai railway station)
with a beautiful train station, built during the Russian Empire, railroad from
St. Petersburg to Warsaw. Called Olkieniki in Polish, Valkininkai had not only
a station, but also a locomotive repair workshop. There was an old water
pumping station (vadakačkė) near the nearby Spengla River in the village of
Vaitakarčmis.
New Valkininkis are known to all the rich gentlemen of
Vilnius who go to Druskininkai for a massage - there is a market of forest products, where such stars as
Vytaras Radzevičius stop on their way to or from Merkinė, or Andrius Užkalnis,
who buys medicinal herbs, eggs, mushrooms, berries and even potatoes so that
you don't have to drive yourself to the hated potato-digger event with your family.
Turgelis is my favorite shopping place in the Republic of Lithuania, even more
fun than the crab, scallop and Japanese beef shops in the capital.
9. Old Varėna, which is the real Varėna (unlike the calm and
quiet center of the district Varėna, where the architecture reflects the worst
traditions of the Lithuanian Soviet apartment building). Old Varėna has a tower
of incredible grotesque monstrosity, welded from metal pipes, and built in a
ring at the entrance to the town. This green folk craft monster looks like
something Shrek would have made in his craft lessons. The positive effect is
that everyone pauses to get a good look and take a photo of this epic
scarecrow, and there is zero traffic accidents on the stretch.
What to leave alone?
1. Alytus is a boring city. This is not the fault of its
inhabitants: it was turned from a church village into an artificial city by
Soviet planners who introduced factories. Most of the city resembles Belarus,
and it is not by chance - it was polluted by industrialization after the Second
World War, just like the cities of Gudija.
2. Druskininkai has a lot of fun spas and even decent
restaurants, but the city of a thousand massages with its sad planning still
reminds of the days when it was a resort for the Soviet Union (it is true that
it was once established as a resort of the Russian Empire, but the good things
remained from those times , old villas). The city planning is reminiscent of
the Lazdynai district in Vilnius: like Lazdynai, the layout was good and
beautiful only when you compare it with military towns and cement factories.
3. Grūto Parkas is an interesting and valuable museum, but it
is not a good idea to poison yourself with images of communist thugs, criminals
and maniacs on your free day. It's like the Auschwitz concentration camp here:
it is suitable for education, with a proper explanation, to take young people
to understand how it is not necessary to live and why it is necessary to
protect one's country from a totalitarian regime. However, like the Museum of
Victims of Occupation and Freedom in Vilnius, it is not entertainment and
certainly not a reservoir of good emotions."
Komentarų nėra:
Rašyti komentarą