After the conference we had a day to relax. We travelled by coach through the gentle rolling counryside to Soleczniki, a largely Polish town to the south of Vilnius near the Belarus border, to share in the annual harvest festivities. We were greeted by the Mayor who was head of the Soleczniki (Salcininkai in Lithuanian) district who proudly described that 80% of the town's population was Polish, which, he claimed, was the highest density of Polish ethnicity in any part of the world outside Poland. Looking around I could see many distinctive individually built wooden bungalows, many undoubtedly nineteenth century, some beautifully painted, some looking drab and neglected, but the streets themselves were wide and modern, and several supermarkets could have been similar to anything to be found throughout the more prosperous settlements in Europe.
We were guided to the local park, filled with elaborate stalls filled with the produce of the area, bread, meat products, fish, woollen and woven clothes and tableware, wooden kitchenware, as well as artistically carved or painted artefacts. Some of the stalls had been provided by local towns in the Salcininkai district and had elaborate bioramas showing wooden huts with straw roofs and replicas of farm animals and farm produce, but imaginatively presented. You could even pose for a photo as a jolly farmer and his wife, or as a farm animal, by poking your head through a hole in a vertical board depicting the appropriate rural character. Alongside the market was a fun fair, including a small rollercoaster, huge gondola shaped swings, a trampoline, a bouncy castle, and a carousel on a tower some 15 metres high. Nothing there to tempt a 76 year old like me, but fun to watch children and young parents sharing the thrills.
In the middle of the market was a large open air seated arena which had been set up for a harvest mass of thanksgiving. Priests performed the mass against a backdrop of a large choir of young people in colourful local folk costumes. I stood at first at the back of the massive congregation, but aware that the ceremony was due to take at least one and a half hours, I eased out back among the market stalls and turned for a walk out of the formal park area into the picturesque countryside outside. The further out I walked the less I could hear of the choir and as my path became enveloped in trees, the singing got fainter and fainter, until finally I had submitted myself to the quieter sound of the forest. I must have walked two kilometeres passing nobody on my way and even crossed a modern tarmacked road with no cars or carts passing along it. In the silence of God's trees and fields I felt more in harmony with Him then by attending any mass.
I must have been gone an hour, but eventually I walked back down the path to the fair. I passed once again through the rich tapestry of stalls with handicrafts and food offerings, back through the town, just to reach the cultural centre where a massive array of hot and cold food had been prepared for our group and other guests, including even the Polish and U.S. Ambassadors. The Amercian Embassy actually had a small tent of the outskirts of the market, where two of our Polish-American participants at the conference had run by chance into the Ambassador, unaware initially who he was. They happily shared a joint photo and described our activity in this part of Lithuania.
After that, we still had two hours to kill before we were whisked away. In the festival arena, following the mass and the blessing of the harvest, the area was filled with a concert showing popular local folk groups and singers. After 5pm a famous Polish rock band was due to perform but we wanted to slip away before that. In that time, I looked around for presents to take back to London, including a pretty pair of woollen slippers for Albina, a large towered tree cake with frilly sides, and a raunchy carved wooden tablet for our guest bathroom door, showing a man in a Russian sauna being flogged with twigs by a busty young lady. That last could look well on the inside door of our guest bathroom, I thought.
(That evening, on checking a map, I discovered that my walk into the forest was on a westward path. If I had followed a path to the south for the same distance, I could have stumbled into a Belarusian border post).
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