Museums

It's autumn here in Lithuania and this week is fall break if you are a student and staff at LCC. I am thankful to say that I am not the RD on duty this week, leaving Erik and I free to explore the neighboring countries of this place we are beginning to call home. We took Saturday to recover from a full week of work and classes before we threw our packs on our backs and ran to the bus station this morning to catch the Eurolines Lux Express for a 5 hour bus ride north to Riga, the capitol city of Latvia. Since stepping off the bus in this beautiful city of ornate architecture and many statues, Erik and I have been wondering how it is that a city less that 150 miles away as the crow flies can actually feel as if we are in a completely different country, complete with its very own language. Although we can tell that the Latvian language is definitely related to Lithuanian, Erik and I are realizing that our basic Lithuanian phrases aren't getting us anywhere now that we are in Latvia. Good thing so many of the young people here speak English.

The bulk of our afternoon was spent in the Occupation Museum of Latvia in Old Town. This was our second time seeing and hearing the telling of the Russian and German occupations of Eastern Europe since making a Baltic nation our home. The first time was earlier in October when we travelled to Vilnius, Lithuania's capitol city. We spent hours walking through The Museum of Genocide Victims (also called the KGB Museum), hearing and reading about the people and events of Lithuania's tumultuous and tragic history over the last hundred years. Both museums do an incredibly detailed job of recounting the story of the Baltic perspective to those of us that lived on the other side of the globe and were less involved in the struggles caused by the Soviet and Nazi regimes. I have included a web address below for you to check out if you are interested in hearing about our time at the KGB Museum in a round about sort of way by reading the blog entry of a friend of ours that experienced the museum with us. I would highly recommend checking it out as she is an excellent writer. Once you get to Michelle's blog, you will need to scroll down to her October 4 entry.

http://mwebsterhein.blogspot.com/

So what do I do with this story I am learning? What I read and saw today at the Occupation Museum of Latvia is adding to my understanding of people here. Not only am I becoming informed of the atrocities that people here faced - deportation, imprisonment, executions - I am also starting to understand the ways this story has affected the current generation through my interactions with and observations of students at LCC. I am by no means an expert on the whole topic, but I am thankful for this hands-on way to have history and today connect in such an unmistakable way. It is my hope to share with you as Erik and I see, hear, and continue to take it all in.