Last weekend Jantine and i returned from 12 days in Lithuania. We were very happily suprised by this country, the curious spots it has to offer and by the very lively contemporary history.
Last two are certainly combined by Gruto Parkas, near the health resort Druskininkai on the southern border with Belarussia.
When Lithuania became independent again in 1991, the former kolchoz manager and wrestling champion Viliumas Malinauskas decided to buy and collect as many statues and Soviet attributes as he could. Then he kind of re-installed them in a wood in Grutas. Although not without some very critical comments on Soviet occupation, not all Lithanians were too pleased with this initiative.
"It keeps worshipping statues of bad people," the director of the museum of deportation in Druskininkai says.
Grūtas Park was officially opened on 1 April 2001 and Lithuania was in center of the world news for some weeks. 'Le monde', 'Newsweek' and 'Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung' were just three of the magazines coming to Grutas to see and probably remember forever how brute, omnipresent and terrifying The State was in the days of occupation. And perhaps the could even feel the temptation communism had: comradery and equality seemed to be core business for those who were unable to see what the high end apparatsjiks afforded themselves.
A remarkable place, shocking, bizar and understandable at the same time.
Wonderful.
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