Run-down. I keep coming back to this phrase when trying to describe Kaunas, Lithuania. The city isn’t uniformly so, of course.
I wouldn’t mind living in this gleaming new apartment building. It’s centrally located and I’m a huge balcony fan (26 July 2018).
I’ve never seen a church like Christ’s Resurrection Church. It’s modernist, stark, enormous, hulking even. Situated on a hill to the north of Laisvės alėja, it’s viewable from all over the city. It was started in 1934 but not completed for 70 years, a testament to the rough 20th century Lithuania endured (29 July 2018).
As I mentioned in my last post, Kaunas’ cool old brick buildings really stand out to me because they’re so uncommon in the other cities I visited. This example is from 1899, when Russia ruled Lithuania (26 July 2018).
A local artist transformed this old brick building into a giant canvas called “Windows” (28 July 2018).
Other Kaunas buildings aren’t run-down; they’re just plain ugly.
The architect of this building apparently thought, “I think I’ll hide the gleaming glass behind a giant mesh wall of rusty metal, to ruin the view for the occupants and passers-by both” (29 July 2018).
This towering monstrosity, which I have to assume dates from the Soviet period, isn’t run-down so much as, from the look of it, never completed in the first place (27 July 2018).
But the most memborable facet of this city to me, as I walked all over it from stem to stern, was the shabby condition of so many of the buildings. Some may have been quite striking in their youth, and others were always ugly ducklings, but they’re similar now in their crumbling, decrepit appearance. And the examples below aren’t photos of some dilapidated shack at the end of a dead-end street. They’re all located along heavily foot- or car-trafficked parts of the city.
Corpus Christi Church, sitting astride Kaunas’ best nightlife street, Vilniaus gatvė, is in serious need of repair. The metal mesh running around the building at about the 10-foot mark clued me in to that. It’s there to prevent chunks of falling masonry from clobbering pedestrians. The mostly-effaced legend “Garrisonkirche” above the entrance likely indicates that this was the church used by the German army garrison in World War I (26 July 2018).
Protective metal mesh appears again on this decaying building near Kaunas Castle (28 July 2018).
These façades line a major intersection in the center of the city (29 July 2018).
What bothers me most about this street is not the graffiti or the peeling paint, but the narrow sidewalk on only one side (26 July 2018).
And that’s another thing that bothered me about Kaunas: It’s a car-centric city. Not since Brașov, Romania, have I set foot in one of those, and I daresay car culture creeps even closer to the city center in Kaunas than Brașov.
A parking lot sprawls north of Kaunas Castle. People drive here, park their cars, and visit attractions. Take the bus or the train, people! And Lithuanians drive American-size cars, too (26 July 2018).
One more photo should nail my point home. This McDonald’s drive-thru is located not out in the ‘burbs, but just two blocks off pedestrian Vilniaus gatvė in the heart of Kaunas’ Old Town. The horror! Although I’m somewhat mollified by the fact that this McDonald’s, perhaps in a nod to European custom, sports an outdoor cafe as well (27 July 2018).
But, before I go into the ratings, to end my description of Kaunas on a positive note, I should point out that this city is very well supplied with green spaces. And some of them, despite being very close to the city center, have an un-manicured, natural feel to them.
Walk off the eastern end of the main drag, Laisvės alėja, and you end up here (27 July 2018).
Santakos Parkos (“Confluence Park”) sits, apppropriately enough, at the confluence of the Nemunas and Neris Rivers, just west of Kaunas Castle. Even on a sunny summer Saturday, there’s hardly a soul here to disturb you as you watch the rivers flow swiftly by, swarming with tiny fish (28 July 2018).
And if it’s grass you want, Confluence Park has that too (28 July 2018).
But my favorite park in Kaunas is Nemunas Isle Park. It’s located, again as you would expect, on an island in the Nemunas River just south of the city center. Aside from a gleaming new arena plunked incongruously down on the eastern tip of the island, it’s all trees, grass, and dirt trails. It reminds me of a less thickly forested version of Roosevelt Island in Washington, D.C. You can pop over here and you’d hardly know you were in a city, were it not for the roar of the four-lane highways on either side of the river (28 July 2018).
Now for the numbers:
- Rent: 6.3. The average monthly rental cost for a one-bedroom apartment in central Kaunas is $445.13. Pretty good, until you consider that Poznań, Poland costs less ($407.71) and offers more.
- Walkability: 6. Pedestrianized main drags=good. Cars=bad. Also, the city is long and narrow, rather than tight and compact, making for longer walking distances between appealing downtown locations.
- Dating: 8.
- Food: 7.5. Your average main dish at a sit-down restaurant here in Kaunas costs €5-6 ($6-7). That’s even cheaper than in Romania. On the other hand, a pint of cheap beer at a restaurant costs €3 ($3.50), which is a little more expensive than in Romania or Poland.
Traditional Lithuanian fare definitely meets the classification of “comfort food.” My favorite are cepelinai (often called “zeppelins” in English, because they’re about that large). They are huge potato-flour dumplings stuffed with meat and cheese and served in a bacon, mushroom, or sour cream sauce. Delicious! (27 July 2018).
I don’t think I’ve ever eaten herring before, but they’re a common Lithuanian side dish. This fillet was served up ceviche-style, raw with red onions, sprouts, potato wedges, tomatoes, and, of course, more sour cream. Very tasty (27 July 2018).
And I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Lithuanian beer is the best in Europe (keep in mind I did not visit Germany or Belgium on this trip). It may be a little pricer than its Polish or Romanian cousins, but even the cheap local brands, in my experience, are close to craft-beer quality (27 July 2018).
- Ambience: 5.
- Transit: 6. I didn’t take any of the city buses while I stayed in Kaunas, but there seemed to be a plentiful supply.
27 July 2018
- Health care: 5.8. Lacking data on Kaunas, I’m using Vilnius as a proxy.
- Nature: 7. See my discussion of parks above.
- Internet: 7.
- Crime: 5.6. The crime rate in Kaunas is, surprisingly, the highest of any of my destinations so far, if the data are to be believed. But it still has a much lower incidence of crime than Washington, D.C., where I felt perfectly safe stumbling drunkenly through the city center at 3 a.m. on a couple of occasions.
- Language: 2.5. Lithuanian is very tricky, and my guidebooks didn’t help, disagreeing on what the most basic of terms (“hello,” “thank you”) are here. I could rely on Google Translate to provide an audio pronunciation of foreign words in most of my destinations, but there are so few Lithuanian speakers that Google doesn’t provide this service here. I managed to learn only one word in Lithuanian, ačiū, which means “thank you.” And I could only remember it because it’s the same word English speakers use when they sneeze.
- Bikeability: 7. In addition to the nice bike lane up the middle of Laisvės alėja, I noticed signs (again, thank you EU for the €) indicating that the construction work along the Nemunas River embankment is for a new, reasonably long cycling path.
28 July 2018
- Friendliness: 5. There is a bit of the stereotypical Eastern European perma-frown here, mainly among older people. But the Lithuanians I interacted with — young restaurant waitstaff mostly — upheld Western standards of courteous service.
- Pollution: 8.2. This very impressive number belongs to Vilnius, but I bet Kaunas is close. The air was perfectly fine, and I think the water in the Nemunas River is the clearest I’ve seen in any European river thus far.