Siauliai, Lithuania
August 4, 2025
I had come to Siauliai in a largely random manner. In part because it was enroute to Riga, in part because that was where the next bus was headed and in part because there was a place called Hill of Crosses nearby that piqued my interest. The fact that this town is largely ignored by tourists was an added lure. I found a place to stay in an area with small wooden houses sporting corrugated metal roofs. Even the newer houses made of bricks had the same roofs.
It all started because Igor, the owner did not take credit cards. Since I hadn’t enough cash on me, he gave me convoluted directions to an ATM in a mix of Russian and inadequate translation courtesy of Google. Ten minutes later, he came to say his friend was outside in his car and could take me to the ATM. And so I met Kostas.
He has a kind face and twinkling eyes that betray a sense of humor. His English is minimal and my Russian non-existent but we chat easily. I find that he is a retired professor and taught Geography at the university in Sialuliai. He asks if I mind a stop at a cemetery first. His wife, a cardiologist by profession, passed away in January and he wants to change the candles at her grave. Kostas had hip surgery not too long ago and has to use a walker. So I climb the couple of steps to the grave to hand him the candles. This cemetery is vast, stretching a couple of kilometers; the graves I saw seem to stem from early 1900s.
And then he asks me what I want to see in Siauliai. On hearing Hill of Crosses, he insists that it is very close and will drive me there. He vetoes all questions about buses. We chat as he drives and I begin to fit in the pieces of the puzzle that is the house I am staying in. Igor is his friend of many years and is from Ukraine. He and his family came here at the start of the war and rented another friend’s house. Ah, now it makes sense! Most of the people in the house are not travelers; they are mostly men, all from Ukraine and appear to do odd jobs around the place. We arrive at the Hill of Crosses and Kostas says he will wait in the car, urging me to go look. It is a small hill with paths to it lined with crosses.
There are thousands of them in just about all shapes and sizes. Some are little model houses, some are tall poles made of wood, reminiscent of folk-art, some are metal. Nor are they all Lithuanian when I peer at the signs. I recognize a kachkar! It is just as fancifully carved as the ones I saw in Armenia .
The story goes that it began with the unsuccessful uprisings of the Polish-Lithuanian peoples against Russia in the late 1800s. When families could not locate the bodies of fallen rebels, they began to put up these symbolic crosses. The Soviet religious persecution of mid 1900s saw the numbers mushroom. When the area was bulldozed, more crosses would appear overnight, planted under the cover of darkness. In the newly freed country in 1990 saw the numbers skyrocket to the literal jungle that it is today.
Getting back to the car, I find that Kostas is now in tour mode. I am never one to say no and so I am taken to see the sundial in the shape of a golden archer. Then we stop at Talksa Lake with its resident gaggle of geese. A giant metal sculpture of a fox graces the shore. It is considered lucky he tells me, for newly-weds to leave a padlock as a symbol of their love. Not on a bridge but on a fox, I ponder. How curious.
Nearby, through an old stone gateway is an older cemetery. Again, he urges me to go look while he waits in the car. This one predates the newer one as I see from some of the gravestones. Some are trees carved out of stone. I ask why but Kostas doesn’t know.
We drive by a pair of churches and he says that he grew up a hundred meters from the church but it didn’t rub off. Equally irreligious, I chuckle. We have whiled away most of the afternoon when we stop at an ATM and he drops me off. I have been a disappointed “windscreen visitor” for most of this trip with zero contact with people. Who knew I would find it here? What an unexpected delight this has been!
ITCHY FEET TRAVELS 