From Russia with Lunch Read Online Free

wear off, the captain sounded deliciously like a Bond villain. Although my seat was frayed to the point that its webbing was visible, the scenery as we dropped into Vilnius slackened my jaw and tickled my neck.
    Twenty-eight per cent of the country is forested and there are over 3000 lakes in Lithuania’s 65,000 square kilometres. From above, this topography results in not so much a patchwork but a finely beaded wall hanging resplendent with intricate stitching, deftly formed fringing and the chance to bust out terms that the vast dryness of Australia rarely occasions. There were glades, there were dells, there were meadows, there were spits which extended like sandy tendrils into passive seas. It was as if all my isthmuses had come at once.
    With my gear stashed in a ‘business hotel’ – read no baths but the doorman can get you a hooker – I headed into Vilnius with autumn sunshine on my face and the 360-degree stimulation that comes with being in a new city. It is, first and foremost, a safe city. ‘Truly heinous crimes are rare here,’ noted one of the pamphlets I picked up at the reception desk, ‘but theft is becoming increasingly common. Don’t leave mobile phones, wallets, purses or fashion-accessory pooches unattended or out of your direct reach.’
    Situated in a valley at the confluence of the Neris and Vilnia rivers, archeological evidence suggests there was a settlement at present-day Vilnius at least as far back as the first century AD. But if Moses has taught me anything it’s that a good story is far more entertaining than the truth. The legend goes that in 1323, Grand Duke Gediminas had enjoyed a corker of a day hunting in the area when he lay down for a snooze. He dreamed of seeing an iron wolf on the hill above him, which roared with the ferocity of a hundred hounds. ‘Bloody hell,’ he wondered, ‘what’s all that about?’ Taking his nocturnal vision to the pagan high priest Lizdeika – Lithuania was the last European country to convert to Christianity – Gediminas was told this was a sign to build a town on the very spot of the howling lupine. ‘I’m all over it,’ he replied, and thus the legend of Vilnius came to pass. The fact that a wooden castle had already been standing there from the eleventh century is not mentioned much.
    In 1323, Gediminas established the equivalent of a MySpace page by writing an open letter to the priests, craftsmen and merchants of Western Europe, inviting them to live in the city he had (sort of) created. The pitch went something like this: ‘Tax exemptions? Why not? Religious tolerance? C’mon down. Freedom of expression? We’re giving it away.’ Aside from French and German Jews fleeing the crusades, Russians, Turks and Huns heeded the call.
    First laid in 1836, the city’s main modern thoroughfare is named after its founder. Bisecting the New Town and running for around two kilometres, this avenue is of such prominence that whoever was occupying the city at the time felt compelled to rename it in honour of the despot du jour. Stalin, Hitler and Lenin have all had their monikers nailed to walls here. Most of the buildings which line Gedimino Prospektas date from the nineteenth century and are in the historicist style. Which basically means builders rifled through an architectural grab-bag in a fit of Liberace-style adornment. Painted in salmons, Dijon mustard and pale blue, there’s not a window unframed by detailed columns or lavish pediments. Motifs of floral plasterwork hang like carved pearls from the eaves and while purists may flinch at such aesthetic excess, I found Gedimino Prospektas thoroughly charming. An impression heightened by the fact that every second block or so, these structures would give way to shady parks or café-sprinkled squares with concrete flower beds the size of a hatchback which brimmed with lilac petunias.
    So smitten was I that I