A TOTALLY Different Side to VILNIUS LITHUANIA

This trip to Vilnius was all about exploring a very different neighborhood called Šnipiškės. It’s located on the north side of the Neris Rive in Vilnius Lithuania and it has some of the most interesting architecture I’ve seen. It also has lots of interesting stories to go along with it.

The location of the bakery where I had the bagel and coffee: https://goo.gl/maps/w3JHjVxfTeHxHv5f9
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All Songs from Epidemic Sound

Song One: Can I be Forgiven by Sleepaway Camp
Song Two: Wandering Nomad by Cody Francis

This big looks so good it’s so fluffy Good afternoon now that i’m caffeinated and fed that bagel was amazing i think i may have to go back and buy some to bring home um i’m going on a tour that’s why i’m in vilnius today i’m going on a tour with vilnius free walking tours uh if you’ve

Ever taken a free walking tour before basically you go on the tour and then depending on the tour guide and your experience you’d leave you give the toy a tip so that’s how you pay for the tour this one is exciting because it’s going to be

In sort of another part of town that i’ve never been to before the tour is called undiscovered vilnius so we’re going to cross the river by bus and explore where the skyscrapers are and see sort of what’s happening over there i’m excited to to see it for myself and share with

You guys how let’s go The tour met at cathedral square at 1 30 pm at the moment it’s only possible to take the tour on tuesdays and thursdays We walked to this spot in the square where you see two feet i learned that this is where the lithuanian end of the peaceful protest which is known as the baltic way began on august 23 1989 roughly 2 million people joined hands across lithuania latvia and estonia for freedom from soviet rule

Imagine all of this was organized before social media even existed From here we walked to the river where we learned a little bit about the art that lines the riverbank about the first power station in vilnius and then we hopped on the bus to a neighborhood called schnepiskis Schnippisches is a pretty sprawling neighborhood in vilnius that sits on the north of the nearest river the tour specifically heads here for the old wooden homes that were once the main type of home that you saw around the city however as the city grows financially and physically as it modernizes and

Looks to build bigger shinier buildings many of these homes have begun to disappear Means something like a big snout place you know something like that it comes from the surname of a person who lived here back in 16th century It’s pretty incredible some of these buildings are over 200 years old and some of them have been redone like ones that i we just went past um but a lot of them haven’t been touched since soviet times since first soviet times it’s it’s a unique place with the skyscrapers

In the background she said every year they get a little closer to the neighborhood so it’s very fascinating you will notice it’s painted in all kinds of different colors on the right side it’s white then you’ve got something like yellow and brown why is one house painted in different colors different people

Different people different families so this this area it uh it changed a lot like the rest of lithuania when we became part of soviet union as you probably know from the history a lot of people they were deported especially if they had a big house that was one of the

Main reasons to get deported to siberia and then what happened they would divide the house into several apartments and bring people as like colonialization process to live so people would live in one house have just one kitchen just one bathroom everything would be shared and to this day it is a

Big problem as the tour guide mentioned these houses are now occupied and owned by multiple different families many are also protected as historical landmarks so you can imagine that selling or even just remodeling these houses can be a bit of a problem so instead something else tends to happen in this part of Get a town to demolish a house it is much easier to burn a house down somebody has already talked about it here uh well and not accidentally stopped by a burn house you can see that there is still a little bit left now it’s overgrown with some plants but

This is just one of the houses that were burnt before 2019 like before 2019 you could turn on the tv and like one day out of two something was burning here in schniebesgas they just would happen all of the time Eventually we made our way out of the neighborhood of wooden houses and simply by crossing the street found ourselves amongst some of the city’s tallest and most modern buildings this is europa tower which was officially opened in may 2004 to commemorate lithuania joining the eu it is 148 meters or 485.5

Feet tall making it the tallest building in the baltics yeah my grandfather remembers that he found out that they had bananas in that shop that shopping mall and what he did is he immediately he took his money he just drove here as fast as he could and there was already

Like a big line of people waiting and but he stood in that line and there were so many people and bananas were really expensive we tried to convert the money with my grandfather we got something like 20 euros per kilo kilogram uh but you know in soviet union people often

Had money but nothing to buy so he he waited in that line and when he got to the front you can guess what happened there were no bananas left our final stop of the day was to hotel liatuva liatuva means lithuania in lithuanian during soviet rule this was where

Foreigners stayed and where they were fully monitored including having their rooms bugged with microphones you may have heard of similar hotels in berlin latvia or estonia it’s now a radisson hotel with a great viewpoint from the bar i hope you guys enjoyed this video i absolutely love taking tours

And seeing a different side of a city one that i wouldn’t find on my own it’s why i love to travel it’s why i love to meet people who are from the place i picked the brain of our tour guide for some other cool spots to check out

When i’m next in vilnius if you’re enjoying this series and you want to follow along with what we’re doing um the more of the day-to-day in lithuania you can follow along on instagram eternal expat uh i update my stories every single day i’ve just started making reels i mean my

First real about lithuania so i’m having a lot of fun sharing photos and videos uh there a lot more often than i do here on youtube if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up it really supports my channel and i will see you next time bye