June 6th - Vilnius: the intriguing capital of Lithuania, formerly part of the Soviet Union
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 6 June 2025
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
I'm back in the USSR – or at least what was a small part of that vast and brutal empire.
Today, Lithuania is a modern, democratic nation and a member of the European Union. Its capital, Vilnius, shook off its communist chains 35 years ago.
As excellent tourist guide Ieva – from Vilnius With Locals – told me, the scars still run deep. But there is much to celebrate...
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Friday the 6th of June and I'm in lovely Lithuania. I flew out here on a 24-pound Ryanair Cheapy and I've been having a lovely time. Vilnius, the capital is a beautiful city. It also, though, has plenty of remnants of the 50 years in which it was |
| 0:23.8 | dominated by the USSR. And I signed up for a 20-Euro Soviet-unnius tour with Yeva, which was |
| 0:33.3 | fascinating. There was a lot of people who come, and the only thing they know about us, that we were part of Soviet Union. |
| 0:40.1 | And sometimes we come and they consider it to be very exotic experience. |
| 0:44.6 | And then they come here kind of like expecting a Hollywood movie from a James Bond era or something. |
| 0:51.8 | But that's why we do these tours because we want to show the |
| 0:55.0 | side which is not portrayed by Hollywood or by even Russian movies, but how it was for us |
| 1:00.0 | Lithuanians to live here. So that's why we do these tours. |
| 1:03.0 | Lithuania itself, just 35 years since it gained its independence from the Soviet Union, it's remarkable that there are still so many |
| 1:13.4 | memories. Definitely because, well, my mother who lived through that era, she was born in this era, |
| 1:20.5 | well, she's still a high school teacher. So, like, she's an active member of a society. And my cousins, |
| 1:30.8 | they still have birth certificates from Soviet Lithuania. |
| 1:32.8 | And they are now in their 40s. |
| 1:34.0 | They run their own businesses. |
| 1:36.1 | So you still remember it. |
| 1:40.6 | And in public space, some things are disappearing slowly, |
| 1:46.9 | but you still have a lot of things in your own apartments, which still tell you the story. So it's not gone as fast as we might have imagined, I suppose, at the time. But at the same |
| 1:53.5 | time, it's also sometimes becoming a nostalgic thing, because you start thinking about your |
| 1:58.4 | grandmother and, you know, looking at the 70s and 60s fashions. |
| 2:03.2 | One thing is 60s in London. One thing is 60s in Soviet Union. |
| 2:07.1 | But there are always this kind of way of looking back at yourself, looking back at your family history, |
| 2:15.1 | and there's always Soviet Union looming there in the corner for you. |
... |
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