A sea museum in... Gražutė Regional Park!

Vida Žilinskienė, the extremely lovable and passionate founder of the Sea Museum

Our dear volunteer colleagues Sabrina (from Germany) and Rocio (from Spain) do their EVS in Gražutė Regional Park. This large protected area is definitely not as wellknown as Aukštaitija National Park can be, and Sabi and Rocio sometimes almost never see visitors for a week or so, even in summer time. And yet, there is some kind of totally unique place thousands of visitors would love to go to. If only they knew...

It is actually difficult in Lithuania to be further away from the sea than where... the sea museum is located!

 This place is full of unbelievable treasures that open their beautiful secrets to visitors. For 30 years, Vida Žilinskienė has collected or has been offered corals, shells, fossils of all kinds. She used to work at school, and the geography programme was very wide (pupils had to know all seas in the Soviet Union, all the world's oceans, and of course, what used to live in those waters). So when travelling, the teacher was actually already collecting the future exhibits of her Sea museum. Then, wherever she would go, she would bring something interesting for herself. When the first 300 exhibits were collected, the collection was included in the list of places of interest of the district.

More in Salakas than in Klaipėda

The teacher was very surprised when a young family who claimed that they had seen much more in Sea museum in Salakas than in the real Sea museum in Klaipėda. Vida Žilinskienė could hardly believe it : 30 000 exhibits are estimated to be in Klaipėda and she has hardly more than 2000. It turned out that the visitors saw a sea fox in Salakas sea museum, which they couldn‘t see in Klaipėda. The sea fox was brought by one of Vida Žilinskienė's relatives, a sailor (nearly all corals and fish were also brought by him).

Vida Žilinskienė is always happy with visitors, and she welcomes them with such obvious passion, immense pleasure and beautiful smile that she makes the visit even more enjoyable. She is a kind companion, an excellent expert of her collection as well as an active citizen of Salakas. 

In the same building, visitors may have a look at Salakas ethnographical and Gražutė Regional Park exhibitions too. With Salakas ethnographical exhibition, you learn about the way people used to live during the whole XXth century. You can get to know some beautiful festivals of Salakas area, as well as old crafts and famous local people.

Luxury was there...

Palūšė is a tiny settlement. Although being one of the biggest of the Park, there are still only about a hundred people who live there permanently. But it's a place of major interest, in the heart of Aukštaitija National Park, and tourism is something important here. It didn't prevent this huge restaurant-cafe-bar to close its doors about two years ago. This place is about to be totally destroyed, as well as quite a few little "cottages" that used to accomodate visitors here. Some new projects should pop up during these next few years. So here we go for the very last visit of this "historical monument".



A bar, on the first floor, first welcomes customers...



From the bar, let's go up the stairs and discover...



some kind of Hawaian bar. Take only the bar itself, and it could

really fit on a postcard sent straight from some Pacific islands 





Here was the dance floor...







Meat cutting room... Hopefully not a torture room...






the kitchen... well... the leftovers






Are we in a church? No, unless you consider a bar a holy place...







On the other side...

Welcome to the hidden part of Palūšė, somewhere underneath the ground, a place that used to be like a small town isolated from the surface. A place in which people used to live and hide, waiting for a better future. This was during the Cold War. Hard to know what happened exactly. But here is our photo report of deep Palūšė.

A long corridor, with rooms on each side.

All kind of scenarii must have been imagined
when building these super-thick doors



This one is even more impressive 

Plenty of these masks were left behind

And still in their package

 





Obviously they didn't use all masks...



A massive diesel engine was probably providing
electricity to the whole underground place



To be able to breathe...

Joninės in Vilkaviškis

A big family-size Joninės, in the nature. The best we could hope for...

After Rasos (different name for Joninės, meaning "dew" in lithuanian) in Ignalina, our mentor Linas invited us for another Joninės, at the other end of the country, near Vilkaviškis, hardly 10km from the russian border (Kaliningrad). In Ignalina, it was crowded and commercial. Here, it was a much more quiet, pleasant, and family-like atmosphere. We loved it!

          

This is the gate under which participants walk, one after another, and then get purified. After that, we had to walk and pick blindy seven plants. A fortune teller was there to interpretate this small bunch. Result? Florence will have a short but very colourful life, whereas Edouard will have a long one, perhaps with many kids, but with plenty of non-achieved ideas or projects. What's best?

We were meant to celebrate the Sun...

... but rain welcomed us first

Here comes the time to burn the bunch of

flowers previously picked for fortune-telling

Gira (bread-fermented beverage), salt and bread

on the menu before sunset.

We only saw a tiny part of it for sunset, but its whole beauty appeared for sunrise. After the shortest night of the year.

The place where we spent our shortest sleepless night. The "vegetation tower" on the right is used for some more fortune telling. The idea is to throw a previously made crown of flowers trying it to get stuck on one of the sticks horizontally attached to the tower. You have to do that while looking in opposite direction. Florence tried many times and never managed. Edouard needed only for try for his crown not to come back to the ground anymore. What does it mean? Well, Florence might never get married (not before a long time anyway), whereas Edouard will within four of five years!

Joninės in Ignalina

Joninės (Saint Jonas in english) is among the most popular and esteemed festivities in Lithuania. Lithuania was the last european country to become Christian. It could explain the great importance of this pre-christian and worldwide tradition, celebrating the sun and the summer solstice. Here in Lithuania, at that time of the year, on the 24th of June, the night is very clear and only lasts for about five hours...

The crowns will be telling the future in the lake...

If the crown of a young man meets the one of a young girl,

they will get married

During Joninės, people gather near rivers or lakes, pick plants to get their future told, and create flower crowns. Then, these crowns are thrown in the water. If they don't get stuck in branches, the year will be good. If the crowns of a boy and a girl meet, it means they will get married! To purify yourself, you have to jump over the fire. Overnight, young people go to the forest to look for a fern flower, that is supposed to give them magical powers. Nine months later, the stork (the national bird) comes back and brings the child born during Joninės.  

A strong man contest...



... followed by a traditional music concert

Florence followed the tradition, making herself

a crown of plants and flowers

                        

Are we becoming local celebrities?

This was on Ignalina's newspaper, about our presence in Joninės