Further on, a haystack came wobbling up the opposite side of the road towards us - the driver perched on top of the load and linked to the carthorse by two impossibly long reins. In Lithuania, the echoes of the past are never too far away. It's like lifting the lid on a box of treasure that has been forgotten about for more than half a century. When Napoleon saw St Anne's, as he marched towards Russia, he was so impressed he said he wanted to take back to France in the palm of his hand. The three saints on the roof of the cathedral did not, however, survive Soviet destruction and were only replaced in 1996 after a 46-year absence.
People now come to make a wish on the square at which the miracle of freedom was born.
The novelty of this freedom perhaps explains why the streets can still be spookily deserted at night. For this, you can get a bowl of delicious beetroot soup, and a mixed grill of beef fillet, pork ribs, salmon, baked potatoes and courgettes plus a bottle of very drinkable Chilean red. The following morning, though, sobriety returns in the form of the KGB Museum or, to give it its proper title, the Museum of Genocide Victims, which is around the corner from the bar. Here you can rent an audiophone and tour the cells where, between 1958 and 1987, thousands of Lithuanians were detained, interrogated, tortured and executed. Many who entered this building were subsequently deported to the gulags in Siberia.