The following day we take a look around Vilnius. The signs of hardship are everywhere, with queues for food and clothing outside the shops. The houses are mostly wooden and Scandinavian in appearance, with corrugated iron roofs.
Many old buildings survive, making some parts of the city quite picturesque.
Other parts, with acres of soviet style blocks of flats and a power station of immense proportions are bleak and ugly. The Lithuanian currency seems almost worthless to us - on the standard exchange rate, a loaf of bread costs us a quarter of a penny. We buy some hand decorated Lithuanian pottery for 8 pence. The river Vilna had completely frozen up by evening and the cold is seeping through our clothing, so we retire to a flat where we have been given a spare room to sleep in. The block of flats is blacked out by power failures, but waste heat from the nearby power station is piped in - raising the flat's temperature to 7 degrees.