We were bemused, depressed, then a roar went up from bars and homes all around, hordes of cheering people spilled into the streets, a cacophony of claxons rent the night air.
The whole city had been watching basketball and the local club Lietuvos Rytas, had just beaten some Greek upstarts to win a European title.
The impact was astounding. In a bar on Didžioji street just down from the Town Hall everybody wanted to be our friend. A smart chap newly rich from selling Audis bought us drinks, recalled his grandparents’ ordeal under Stalin and extolled the virtues of the free market. One young lady, somewhat under the influence of Lithuania’s excellent ales, decided there was only one way to celebrate and went from man to man in the search for suitable partners. She soon found someone to take up her offer and both were thrown out when they starting getting jiggy with it on a bar stool.
Wild enough you might think, but the next night saw us eating beaver.
It seems these cute little dam-building rodents used to be something of a staple among the Lithuanian hunting and fishing set and beaver stew is now a favourite on the menu of Lokys (www.lokys.lt) a restaurant dedicated to serving up ye olde food of yore in a 15th-century merchant’s home. «Visit our house and taste the master’s hunting takes turned on fire for your delight ! » Lokys’ advertising says it all.
Medieval theme restaurants are all the rage across the eastern Europe, so thankfully Lokys stays just on the right side of kitsch ... or maybe not.
On my first visit, a big group of us sat seated around a vast, roughly hewn table on the ground floor where we quaffed a brain-fuzzying variety of local drinks, ate “beaver meat stew with champignons and farce potatoes,” “quail with blackberries sauce, loved by charming Lithuanian ladies”and “boar-meat roast with cowberries, praised by Grand Duke Gediminas.” We were well prepared then for the wandering minstrels who then showed up to serenade us with bagpipes, tambours and hunting horns, before handing round instruments to all the diners so we could participate in this outburst of Baltic folklore.
My recollection of the place - insomuch as I have any recollection after sampling samanė (homemade vodka), žalgiris (extra-strong mead) and the like – was that it was a lot of fun, but that the food was perhaps not the greatest.
However, the lure of the beaver is strong and on a drizzly winter’s night some years later, I found myself leading a group of curious visitors past the wooden bear at the entrance (lokys is Lithuanian for bear) down the shoulder-width stone staircase to the gothic basement vaults for a second go.
This time the atmosphere was more restrained - troubadours only show up at weekends it seems - but the food was excellent. To start, a glass of gira, a refreshing, only slightly alcoholic drink made from fermented bread and similar to Russian kvass. Since this is Lithuania, this one is made from the wonderful black rye bread duona flavoured with caraway. These loaves show up not only as a basis for a drink, but deep fried with garlic as a starter or snack with beer, and even as dessert soaked with cranberry juice and crowned with whipped cream in the local equivalent of bread-and-butter pudding.
Soups are something eastern Europe does very well; beet and potato are two of the most favoured varieties here. But since Lithuania’s forests are famed for their wild mushrooms, the “boletus” soup seemed a good choice, a meaty broth in which these kings of the fungal race floated in abundance. I stuck with them for my main course, a thick, ripe steak of roe deer on a bed of these cèpes, served with little carrot dumplings and bundles of thinly sliced carrot and courgettes.
Lithuania’s big breweries Svyturys, Utenos and Kalnapilis produces some fine alus (beer), but the Lokys also sells its own “old Lithuanian beer,” named Butautų dvaro which is a deliciously malty brew served in one litre bottles, which you can also buy to take home (although remember you won’t be able to carry them on to the plane.) Just one more treat to help that rye-bread pudding down, Bobelinė, a bitter shot made with cranberries. A great meal even without the bagpipes, for around 100 litas (€30).
A few facts about Vilnius: it’s the capital of Lithuania which together with Latvia and Estonia broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991. In the 14th and 15th centuries in a union with Poland, Lithuania was one of the most powerful states in Europe, with borders stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Lithuanians claim the old town of Vilnius is the biggest in Europe _ although it’s hard to see how they measure these things. Over the years it’s been fought over by Russians, Swedes, Poles and Germans. Even when the rest of Lithuania gained a brief burst of independence between the wars, Vilnius was still ruled by the Poles who called it Wilno. Polish and Russian are still spoken by minorities in Vilnius. One of the most popular dishes in Lithuania are Zeppelins (or actually Cepelinai) _ airship-shaped lumps of mashed potato stuffed with minced meat and served in some slimy cream or oil-based sauce. Lithuanian claims to be one of Europe’s oldest languages and is like no other. Hello is labas, thank you is ačiu (pronounced atchoo, so if you catch a cold people will think you are really polite.)
Lithuania was the last pagan country in Europe, converting to Christianity only in 1387. Since then they’ve made up for it and the skyline of old Vilnius is a forest of church spires, mostly in the baroque style with soaring facades in lemon, cream or peach and ornate bell towers, which give the city a strongly Catholic and almost southern European feel.
However, he three best known churches buck the trend. The Arkidatedra Bazilika cathedral is the heart of Lithuanian Catholicism, but looks more like a Greek temple behind the columns of its classical portico. The Cathedral of the Theotokos, Vilnius main Russian Orthodox church, is even more exotic, with its conical towers build in the style of far away Georgia. St. Anne’s is a gothic gem, whose lacy pinnacles so impressed Napoleon that he reputedly planned to have it dismantled brick-by-brick and rebuilt in Paris. The Old Town is not just churches; there are fine palaces and alleyways lined with shops selling linen and Baltic amber. In the heart of it is Vilnius University which dates back to 1570 and is one of the oldest and grandest in northern Europe. Students spill out of the vaulted auditoria and airy courtyards to ensure that the Old Town is no dusty museum piece. There are student bars all around. One of the best is Cozy (www.cozy.lt) which contains a laidback all-day café and restaurant and a hot basement DJ bar at weekends. 
You can stay in four-posted style in the old town at the Stikliai Hotel (http://www.stikliaihotel.lt) a luxury inn that’s welcomed guests since the 17th century, from €190 a night. Another historic boutique hotel is Grotthuss (http://www.grotthusshotel.com) a power yellow town house with rooms from €120. Easier on the wallet is the Ida Basar (http://www.idabasar.lt) which has comfortable, if unremarkable doubles from €100, in a great location just down from the Gates of Dawn, part of the old city fortifications decorated with a venerated gold-coated statue of the Virgin Mary. Appropriately, the Domus Maria guest house (http://domusmaria.vilnens.lt) is even closer to the golden gates, offering rooms from €72.
To enjoy the view over all those dreamy church spires, climb the hill in the Užupio district, an artsy neighbourhood beyond the river Vilnele which actually claims to be a sovereign republic with its own independence day … on April 1. Another fine vista can be had from the Gediminas Tower, a squat little fortress perched above the city that’s a symbol of Lithuanian nationhood. Grand Duke Gediminas is the national hero here, a 14th century pagan warrior whose relative religious tolerance saw Vilnius expand into a city of Catholic and Orthodox Christians, Jews and Muslim Tartars living alongside the local followers of ancient Baltic deities. Later that century came an influx of Karaites, a mysterious from the Crimea speaking a Turkic tongue and following a religion with roots in Judaism. They have left their mark on Lithuanian cuisine through the kibinai, lamb or beef pies which look a lot like Cornish pasties and have become a popular Lithuanian snack.
They are particularly tempting in the delightful little Julara bakery and café near the Lithuanian parliament on Gedimino Prospektas, which is the main avenue of Vilnius, housing imposing government buildings, theatres, bookshops and several swanky new shopping centres in elegant stucco buildings.
In the summer, locals will tend to head out of town to eat in the restaurants of Trakai the former capital with its spectacular island castle or to Vandens Malünas, (http://www.vandensmalunas.lt) a friendly restaurant in an old watermill near the Verkiai mansion, which although its menu has standard “international” food it also includes dishes with a Lithuanian flavour such as herring with wild mushrooms and roast leg of duck with pears.
In the winter though, it’s perhaps best to go underground in search of good Lithuanian food in the cellars of the old town. Forto Dvaras (http://www.fortas.eu) is a good bet for the likes of sauerkraut soup with smoked sausage or vedarai, described as “mashed potatoes stuffed in animal guts with crackling and sour cream.”
Then there is Žemaičiai (http://www.zemaiciai.lt) on Vokieciu Street whose underground rooms are divided between bare benches and wooden tables filled with happy crowds of local beer guzzlers and upmarket rooms hung with antlers, stuffed pheasants and the like.
We began with the “half-metre eel,” a thick, smoked monster with a pointy tail and a fixed toothy grin at the other end. Best taken with a shot of iced vodka. Backup came in the form of the “Beer snack” a wooden platter laden with garlic fried black bread, slivers of pig’s ear, slabs of smoked pig’s tongue with pride of place taken by a thick slice from the tip of a pig’s snout, nostrils pointing up to the low arched ceiling. It was excellent with their homemade, unfiltered beer, although I’m not so sure about the Voruta blackcurrant wine. Next up, roast goose breast with fried apples, potato dumplings, brown sauce and apple jam, and to follow šimtalapis, a poppy seed and puff pastry cake with vanilla cream. Maybe that’s what Cole Porter had in mind when he pointed out that the “Lithuanians and Letts do it.” Į sveikatą!
