Warm hearts in the chilly Baltics

For weeks I'd been anticipating our trip a little further north to the three capitals of Baltic states. From the little research I did, I knew that Riga (Latvia) was a beautiful medieval city that was later heavily influenced by art nouveau, but I didn't know what to expect when we touched down in Vilnius (Lithuania)- our first stop on this wee whirlwind tour.

(I should give you a little background on our states of mind as we took off from Berlin this morning. It looks like our show in Russia next week will be cancelled. We are both very frustrated and very angry about how it all went down. I won't get into specifics here, but it's an understatement to say that I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to go Russia.)

It was nice then when we got shown to a great little apartment where we were fed and got a chance to talk with our hosts about something other than touring - we talked about poetry and zines, fun!

We took a mini tour of the city's centre on our way to the venue when two things struck me about Vilnius - the absolutely impeccable shape they their keep their oldest facades in and the number of churches (there's probably enough seating in Vilnius' churches for the entire population of Lithuania).



The oldest church in Vilnius was right outside our apartment. I took a picture of it when we got home after the show. Dramatically lit...



It's not all orthodox onion domes here, but, of course, there's some of those too.



One of the most striking buildings we passed was on the university grounds. The walls are pristine and the only clue to building's age are seriously patina-ed frescoes at the entrance.



The show was great with many people surpised at our presence in their ancient little city. One guy came up to the table where I was selling cds and asked which one was the most popular - it might convince him to buy one. He returned a few minutes later and asked, "You're THAT Nadja?" and then, "What are you doing here?", and then he bought four more cds. It was a good night.