Part II – 1989

"Vitas and Audra laid down on the cobblestones so that they could say they 'got laid in Red Square.'"

"Moscow closed the cathedral after WWII and used it as a warehouse and later as an art gallery."

"Anti-Soviet Placards covered the structure"

“Liquidate the consequences of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Remove the USSR occupation army and its settlers. Compensate the damage of the years of the occupation caused.”

“When’s the next Sajudis demonstration?” I asked the woman. She pointed with her chin toward the intersection and said, “Check the information board at Sajudis.”

"While the director explained the history of the dig site my eyes focused on the flag atop the hill over the Tower of Gediminas."

"Suddenly, a miniature horse pulling a wagon with people in it crossed our path."

"The car swerved onto a dirt road where a red brick gothic church rose above the tree line..."

"Under a towering oak tree, a young man cleaning bones in a bucket stood up and released a loud whistle."

"One of the girls pointed, “We sleep in the trailers over there..."

"That’s the dig site? Maybe we made the wrong choice."

"The work was more difficult than I’d imagined. How hard could it be to sift through dirt? My knees ached from squatting close to the earth. The thick humid air filled my lungs made me lightheaded."

"The sun cast crisp shadows through the still air onto the green blades of wild grass. Moist heat rose from the tall growth forming a balmy mist above the meadow and hills. The pine and birch treetops swayed in the light breeze that reached my brow like a cool caress."

"The hill-fort mounds glowed in the mild haze. A single fluffy cloud defined by the bright sunlight floated over forests in the far distance. The tree-lined hillside above quietly overlooked the vast valley like a guardian bearing witness over the whispered secrets of the past."

"We worked with the Lithuanian students by our side, answering questions and describing life in America. They weren’t so different from us and were interested in the same things: music, movies, fashion and traveling."

“There are good eggs here,” Madame announced as we advanced toward a lopsided home surrounded by short rows of vegetables and flowers.

"We abandoned our wagons that night and arranged our bedding in a circle under the large oak tree in the middle of our encampment."

"Hunched over scraping away at the past, one afternoon Siga began telling me about her family."

"The few shops left from a bygone era flanking the street were empty of both customers and products."

"“Romas Kalanta set himself on fire there to protest Soviet rule,” Birute pointed, “See those flowers on the ground in the middle over there? That’s the exact spot.”

"Photographs and newspaper articles about Kalanta covered the stone wall. Since the Moscow suppressed the details this was the first time many could read about the events of 1972."

"Then I heard bells and singing, but not what I'd expected. A small group of Hare Krishna followers marched up Gediminas Prospect..."

"Vitas was starving and we considered standing in the huge line forming in front of a shop since all the other shops were empty of goods."

"Even though we were in the city center, with each step we seemed to travel backwards in time..."

"Grandpa jumped out of the car and told me to take a photo. The building was his former workplace, when he was a customs officer."

"We gathered at the old church remains on top of the hillside instead of the dig site in the valley. Only the eighteenth-century foundation of the walls remained."

"We brought typical US souvenirs: t-shirts and baseball caps brandishing the American flag and FBI and CIA logos, disposable Bic lighters, jars of aspirin and make-up kits. It was awkward handing out trivial gifts to our new friends."

"“The Czar used to hang people in this park. The most famous hangings were during the 1863 peasant uprising,” Raimonda said."

"Earlier my brother and I visited the Dolarine (“dollar store”) to find booze after our search of regular stores turned up nothing."

"Vitas taught Siga and Emis the time-honored American tradition of how to make music by rubbing the edge of a glass."

"I jumped on this vintage motorcycle. Grandpa said, "Just like the one I used to have before the war..."

"No one would believe the small mound in the middle of a field would be the most scared place in Lithuania."