What to visit and what to avoid in Dzūkija, Lithuania

 

"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."