The last of my stories about our little adventure to Lithuania has a darker undertone to it.
We joined a walking tour on the Soviet history of Lithuania, a chapter of the trip that turned out to be one of the most powerful.
Our guide, Eva, wasn’t just knowledgeable; she was rooted in the story she told. With a PhD in history and anthropology, and Lithuania as her specialist subject, she carried the weight of her homeland’s past with passion and a quiet strength.
And she didn’t shy away from sharing personal stories of her own relatives, lost during the Soviet occupation.
Following a local around on a walking tour brings abstract history to life. It has a face. A voice. A family.
A Country Shaped by Occupation & Fierce Determination
Lithuania’s modern identity is inseparable from its struggle for independence. Eva walked us through the decades of Soviet rule. The censorship, the deportations, the fear, the erasure of culture. And the extraordinary resilience that followed.
Everywhere in Vilnius, Ukrainian flags flutter alongside Lithuanian ones. After hearing Eva’s stories, it made perfect sense. The fear of history repeating itself is not theoretical here; it’s lived memory.
Lithuania has only been independent for 36 years since the Singing Revolution. A peaceful uprising where ordinary people used their voices, literally, to reclaim their freedom. Over a million people formed a human chain across the Baltic states in 1989. Imagine that: hands linked across countries, singing their way back to sovereignty.
And then there’s basketball. In Lithuania it's more than a sport, its a symbol of national pride.
During the Soviet era, Lithuanian players were the stars of the USSR Olympic team. When independence came, the newly free Lithuanian team couldn’t afford to compete… until the Grateful Dead funded their uniforms. They went on to win bronze at the 1992 Olympics, a victory that felt like a second declaration of independence.
A country stitched together by song, sport, and sheer will.
You see it in the street art, and layers everywhere. A place of quiet rebellion, craft and creativity.
It has inspired the pieces I'm featuring in the Love Lithuania Mini Edit collection.
🏚️ The Shadows Beneath Our Feet
Back at our apartment later that day, we finally understood why the building looked so starkly modern compared to its surroundings, and why the courtyard behind it was a fenced‑off patchwork of foundations, scrubby grass, and broken walls.
It wasn’t just an odd bit of urban planning.
It was the site of the Vilnius Jewish Ghetto during World War II.
Between 1941 and 1943, around 14,000 Jews were imprisoned here, forced into labour, and ultimately deported to concentration camps in Estonia. When the Red Army marched into Vilnius in 1944, they killed the last remaining Jews who had been kept alive for their labour.
The ghetto was liquidated by razing the entire block. The very ground our apartment now stood on.
It’s one thing to read history. It’s another to sleep above it.
Vilnius carries its past quietly, but it’s there in the stones, in the courtyards, in the gaps where buildings should be.
🕊️ Modern Vilnius: A City That Remembers and Rebuilds
What struck me most was the contrast: Soviet concrete blocks beside Baroque churches, memorial plaques beside trendy cafés, Ukrainian flags beside street art. A city holding grief and creativity in the same breath.
Vilnius doesn’t hide its history. It honours it. And it keeps moving.
Walking those streets with Eva, hearing her stories, her pride, her pain - made me see the city differently. Not just as a beautiful place to visit, but as a place that has fought, sung, and rebuilt itself again and again.
Lithuania’s resilience isn’t loud. It’s steady. It’s human. And it stays with you long after you’ve left.
Bring a little of that heart, resilience, story, craft, pride and passion into your home. Shop the Love Lithuania Mini Edit Collection, while stocks last.