Vilnius: Yesterday's Soup

Vilnius - our jumping off point to Russia - and what a great place it is. The brand new train station is abuzz with people scooting around on ride-on floor polishers, the town is full of bookshops and cafes (for the university students) and strip clubs (for the UK buck's parties), and the people are proud of their membership of the EU and NATO.

And they have the world's only statue of Frank Zappa here. Well why not?!

We also continued our eastern european history lesson in the excellent, and very creepy ex-KGB Headquarters here, now a museum of genocide. We're starting to build quite a picture of the tug of war which has been going on in these parts for the last century or more at the expense of the local populations.

And we couln't resist visiting the cafe recommended in the Rough Guide as one of the highlights of Lithuania - a pleasant place with a Soup of the Day and Yesterday's Soup both on the menu. Nice, but I think the country has more to offer than that.

So, we have our train tickets for tonight's journey (at least we think that's what we bought - you can never be completely sure you won't be thrown off the train in some subzero outpost for showing a Vilnius Municipal Library card or something), and cousin Peter of St Petersbug has kindly agreed to meet us tomorrow to show us around a bit. Maybe teach us how to ask for train tickets/ warm hats/ borscht in Russian.