Vilnius revisited

Having looked at the previoius blog, I believe that I havent given Vilnius its fair due, so here is an effort to rectify that.
Vilnius has lots of statues, some of them are typical statues of dudes, or dudes on horses, but some statues in this town are eclectic, eccentric and some are just down right wierd. To start with the dudes, there is a communist looking statue on a bridge called the green bridge, which is actually green, of a pair of workers, male and female holding a sheaf of wheat, symbolising everything good about communism. It was such a good symbol that these are the only communist statues left, the rest were torn down, but apparently they like these. There is a statue of a dude with a horse, called Gediminas (the dude, not the horse) who is trying to cut the air. He was a famous king around here and may or may not have done some good\bad things. His statue is just outside the cathedral and the whole area was once an important pagan site. Then there are the odd statues. There is a statue of an egg on top of a pole. It was there for a long while when it hatched... and another statue came out of it. This statue was of an angel with a trumpet. >Both of these are in different places in the city. There is also an angel sitting, wearing a pair of rollerblades. Vilnius could not be called unimaginative.
Another cool thing is a bridge that has hundreds of locks on it. People come on their wedding day and put a padlock on a bridge, to symbolise their union. Most of them have engravings on, with names and dates. I think that someone must come along every now and the to remove them because none of the locks were more than 2 years old. Speaking of weddings, we saw quite a few on the Saturday, and Sunday for that matter, in the numerous churches in this city. One must have been for a rich or important couple (read mafia) because they had a square in front of the church to themselves, and a camera man who was filming them while they danced. Without music. And the camera man was doing circles around the couple like it was a Michael Bolton film clip. One more thing that is really eccentric. There is an area, kind of a suburb called Uzupis which has its own declaration of independence and bill of rights. Every April fools Day you can get your passport stamped from this pseudo-country and there is a plaque written in several languages with the constitution. Some examples are: Everyone has the right to be idle, Everyone has the right to sometimes be unaware of his duties, Everyone has the right to realize his negligibility and magnificence, Everyone has the right to understand nothing, Everyone shall remember his name, Everyone has the right to be misunderstood and my favourites, A dog has the right to be a dog and
Everyone has the right to look after a dog till one or the other dies. There are a lot more, look it up (Uzipis constitution).
Moving outside Vilnius and there is a place called Siauliai and near there is an interesting hill. During the communist era, people would come to this hill and place crosses there, some with names of deceased loved ones, some decorated, some just plain wooden crosses. Needless to say (even though I am saying it) it did not go hand in hand with communist doctrine so they were removed, only to be replaced almost immediately. This happened a few times and apparently after a while they just stopped removing the crosses. Today there are quite a few there.
So that is Vilnius revisited. Much more betterer than the first time.