A Goosebump Inspiring Lesson in Lithuanian Culture

The Hill of Crosses in Šiauliai, Lithuania, is a mysterious and beautiful place of pilgrimage in northern Lithuania, home to hundreds of thousands of crosses. After a full day in Riga, Latvia, we began our journey to reach it. It was a bit complicated to figure out how to get there, especially since we were coming from a different country and not somewhere within Lithuania. But we made it work of course. After arriving at the Šiauliai bus station, we found a taxi driver who was willing to take us there and wait for us while we visited the hill. He looked exasperated when he realized that we wanted to stay for a little while while he waited, but we agreed to pay him so that was that (the Baltics are really cheap by the way--this taxi was a bargain by my standards!).

My eyes probably looked like they were going to pop out of my head when the car pulled up to our destination. Heaped on a small hill were literally hundreds of thousands of crosses. A path of crosses lined the walkway to the main hill, where there is a large statue of Jesus with his arms outstretched and in front of that a large crucifix added by Pope John Paul II during his visit in 1993. I began my walk among the crosses, stopping to read the inscriptions on some of them and admiring the beautiful sight.

The history of this place is hard to pinpoint to this day. There are at least a couple of theories--one being historical and one being more spiritual. The first: families placed crosses on this hill where battles had taken place during rebellions against Russia in 1831 and 1863 when their loved ones were lost to the battles and bodies not found. The second one: Around 1850 or before a man of the neighboring village who was very sick promised to build a cross on the hill if he got well, and then he got well while erecting the cross. Regardless of how exactly the Hill of Crosses started, it only gained momentum as time went on. During the time of Soviet occupation, the Hill of Crosses was completely destroyed several times, the wood being burned and the metal being melted. KGB guards would even patrol during the day to prevent new crosses from popping up. Not long after every disappearance of the Hill of Crosses, the crosses would be placed again in secret and the number would keep growing. The number was said to reach 100,000 by the time of the Lithuanian Revival in 1988. Today it is customary to add a cross to the hill when visiting it.

The suffering endured by Lithuanians is impossible to imagine, and yet they acted so courageously by not giving up on adding the crosses, even when religion was forbidden and people were severely punished for it. After WWII began, Lithuania was occupied three times. Including forced emigration, Holocaust victims, and mass deportations, Lithuania lost one-third of its population. (I'm not suddenly a history wiz, I got these figures here). This place is a microcosm of Lithuania. It is a testament to the hope and courage of its people even when history was not so kind. It's a display of the Catholic identity of its people. It's a continued source of hope and solemnity to visitors from around the world.

I found myself getting chills as I thought about the stories that might be behind each cross, the resilience of the people who insisted they be here, and the reasons people keep coming back to this day. Wow.

Goodbye Vaasa

My mom and Rachel shared my last day in Vaasa with me, a beautiful sunny day. I took them to the city center where there was a cheesy market complete with a bounce house, booths selling the same cheaply made clothing, and local bakeries tempting people with their delicious smelling pastries and Finnish rye bread. We then visited the Ostrobothnia Museum, which tells the stories of this region and of the archipelago. The archipelago--the thousands of islands right off the coast of Vaasa--are really unique. The area was named an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006, and the land actually continues to rise almost 1 cm every year. Truly a geological anomaly in my book. Anyway, my mom and Rach helped me see this city that I've come to call home one last time. The bright blue sky contrasted the sadness in my heart to leave this place.

I had already said goodbye to my classmates a couple days before when we all met at Novia to collect our final transcripts and letters of confirmation to send to our home universities.  The day before that I hosted a farewell dinner at my apartment, so it has felt like I've been saying goodbyes all week. Squeezing 18 people into my apartment was really fun, as was feeding them!

The time I've spent in Finland has been incredible. I have learned a great deal about myself and others. I've gotten to work on an amazing project that will hopefully benefit the waste management companies in Ostrobothnia which could in turn help produce some sustainable solutions for the region. I've gotten to see amazing things that I never in a million years thought I would get to see. I am incredibly fortunate to have this experience, and it will always be a part of me.

Tomorrow my mom, Rachel, and I are leaving for our end of semester vacation. I anticipate that I'll add a couple more posts to this blog about those destinations. In the meantime though, thank you, whoever you are, for reading this. You've been a part of my journey and I hope you've enjoyed reading as much as I've enjoyed writing it!

I'll miss the sunniest city in Finland!

Farewell dinner

 "You get a strange feeling when you leave a place, like you'll not only miss the people you love, but you miss the person you are at this time and place because you'll never be this way ever again." -Azar Nafasi

Spring in Vaasa

For my second to last day in Vaasa, I am going to celebrate the spring. The city's transformation has been a drastic one, from snowy white and blue-gray mornings to vibrant colors and so much sun. I've documented the contrast in all the different parts of Vaasa I see on a daily basis--the university campus, the city center, and the coast. Call me crazy but I love them both.

Reunited in Sweden

Over the weekend Rachel and I took on Stockholm, the capital of Scandinavia. I met her at the Stockholm Arlanda airport, me flying just an hour from Vaasa and her flying all the way from Dallas. It was a lovely weekend full of art, bad luck (that we laughed at, I'll get to that), cardamon, and exploring. With the Stockholm card in hands, which gained us entry into almost every museum and free public transportation, we wandered around the unique districts in Stockholm, and soaked up all the exciting city had to offer.

Our first day we explored Gamla Stan, where Stockholm was first built after its founding in 1252. A hundred shades of gold accented by pink flowered trees and bright green overhanging vines. We wound through the cobblestone streets, peeking at Swedish design boutiques, tacky souvenir shops, and endless cafes boasting of the best fika in Stockholm. And then some bad luck struck. Basically, you won't notice if your shoe picks up a piece of garbage when you're already stepping on imperfect cobblestones. A plastic tie--maybe it had a 10 in. circumference?--got picked up by one of my feet, and it was probably just within the next step that my other foot found its way in also. I fell to my doom in the middle of a Stockholm street, first landing on my knee caps and then flat on my face. A few nice Swedes made sure I was ok, but I said thank you and scurried away to save my pride. I only lasted a few steps, though, before I realized that both of knees were swollen and in a lot of pain. That must have been quite the scene, especially with Rachel standing there laughing at the event (no offense taken). I hobbled back to the hotel led by Rachel and spent the rest of the evening icing both of my knees.

The next day we were determined to make up for lost time, so we took a bus to Djurgården, a green and cheery island in Stockholm that is chock full of museums. We visited five that day--the Vasamuseet, ABBA: The Museum, Nordiska Museet, Spritmuseum, and Fotografiska. They were all wonderful, each one offering something so different than the last. From a shipwreck salvaged from the 1600s, to controversial emotive photography, to the Sami people, to alcohol in Sweden, to the Swedish Music Hall of Fame, we saw a little bit of everything! Plus with walks through bright spring greenery and lunch and an ice cream cone in between, it was a great day. We topped it off by visiting a couple of bars in Sodermalm, known as the hipster district of Stockholm.

I got to see Rachel, I got to use the Swedish I've learned this semester, anf @I got to experience a little bit of the country from where half of my heritage originates...a successful weekend indeed! 

Project Complete!

Ninety-four pages.
Forty-five minutes.
My entire semester boiled down to a 94 page report and a 45 minute presentation. The Novia University of Applied Sciences European Project Semester has officially come to close.

I've learned a lot about renewable energy and its potential in our world, how to both be a member of and manage a multidisciplinary, multicultural team, and how to overcome obstacles and frustrations in a project. The work has had its fun and its challenges, and I honestly think that I will come out a better engineer thanks to this semester.

For information about my project, feel free to ask me and/or check out the project website: http://epsbiomap.wix.com/2015-eps-biomap

The end of the project means my time in Finland is almost finished. This is my last week in Vaasa, which Rachel and my mom will get to share with me before we embark on a summer adventure before I head back to the US. But instead of reflecting too much on the impending ending just yet, I am going to celebrate the beginning of summer vacation and the completion of my junior year of college!

Cruising Through the Beautiful North

You know those Pinterest boards of those totally unreal looking places? Typically viewed by women sitting on their coaches wishing to magically poof themselves to these exotic corners of the world, claiming to infected with a disease called wanderlust? Last week I found myself in three places that I've seen before as subjects of these Pinterest items. Check that off the bucket list.

The Nordic countries are just so stinkin' cool. I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to experience them. And the Arctic Circle. That is just a cool part of the world, both literally and in any other connotation of the word.  Where else do you have to stop driving to let reindeer cross the road? As often as you see cattle grazing on road trips through the Midwest, you see herds of reindeer floating on the snow with their big hooves and munch on grass. I just love it.

Ok, enough gushing about that.

The first part of our Norwegian road trip took us to Nordkapp. After 17 hours on the road, we made it to Honningsvåg, Norway's northernmost city. We settled into a hostel for the night, exhausted after spending so long in the car but exhilarated with the thought of our location on the world map and the adventures to come. Here we realized that the sky wasn't going to get dark for our entire trip. We closed the curtains, got some sleep, and got ready to experience the beautiful north.

The next day we hiked to Knivskjellodden, which is the northernmost point of continental Europe, sitting at 71° 11′ 08″ N. Being May 1, it was still very much early season. At least half of the hike was through snow, and we had first tracks on it! It was like the portion of hiking a mountain that I like to call the never-ending meadow, only the snowy equivalent. Then suddenly the rolling white fields opened up to the sea, and after a traverse across a rocky sideslope, we made it to the summit log. I was standing at the top of Europe!

The next destination on our road trip was the Lyngen Alps. After some driving, a couple of ferries, and a lovely night camping by the side of the road ("lovely" and "by the side of the road" don't sound like they belong together, but trust me, it was Norway), we arrived in Lyngseidet, the main village in the area. We hiked a little ways up a mountain alongside backcountry skiers who were taking advantage of everything life above the Arctic Circle has to offer. We joined a nice French couple in a skihytta, a simple hut for outdoor enthusiasts to sleep during their pursuits. We packed all 11 of us in the structure, and slept in rows on the floor. It was quite a spectacle, I'm sure, for the old man who barreled into the hut to warm up while we were all still sleeping.

After a stop in Tromsø, we continued to the Lofoten Islands. We found a cheap fishermen's cabin in Kabelvåg on the island of Austvågøya, deeming it a good home base for island explorations and day hikes. Lofoten was truly remarkable. Everywhere I looked was a landscape that can only be likened to a very complex individual, fusing so many completely different things into one perfect thing. With every glance and from every new angle there was something new to notice, and I found myself gawking every time I rose just a couple hundred feet on a hike. A sunny island getaway, an Arctic wonder, an outdoor enthusiast's playground, a fishermen's dream. Lofoten had it all.

Because of it's position on the globe, and the fact that it's May, it didn't get dark for the entire duration of our trip. We cashed in on that in Lofoten. Our first night there we began a hike up a mountain at 8pm. We watched from the summit as the sunset turned the clouds pink, and then we began our descent knowing that there would always be enough light to get down comfortably. We joked about our timetable, saying that we needed to hurry and get down before dark--we only had until September! All of us woke up at least once in the middle of the night, swearing that it must be morning by now, but the constant light was such a cool experience while we were outside.

Basically, northern Norway is unreal. It is gorgeous. Sitting on my couch looking at the pictures I took beats dreaming about it on Pinterest any day.