Like elsewhere in the world, the Nemunas and Neris rivers have been known to flood.  Kaunas, where these rivers meet, was flooded 16 times between 1877 and 1950, when the Soviets dammed the Nemunas east of the city as part of a huge hydroelectric scheme – thus creating a small inland sea Kauno Marios. We are exploring the city – in five groups, each accompanied by an artist from Laundry - working with students at the Art Institute at Vytauta Magnus University in Lithuania, in search of Wonders. My group arrives at the confluence of the two rivers as dusk falls, and consider our ‘finds’.

On the other side of the Neris, we can see the old industrial areas, looking silent and abandoned, to all intents and purposes, old Five Year Plans gone awry. Behind us, there is a park with a 13th century castle and by the side of the Old Town, streets of graffiti and empty buildings. Along the Nemunas, on the other side of the Aleksotas bridge a hundred or so fishermen are gathered (and one fisher-woman) in one small spot, drinking, reminiscing, fishing. The bridge itself is perhaps a Wonder, as it once known as the bridge that took 12 days to cross – due to the difference between the Julian Calendar in use on one side of the river and the Gregorian calendar in use on the other. The Red Stars that once adorned the bridge have been removed and replaced by blue light sabres that Luke Skywalker would be proud to possess. Past the bridge, further down the Nemunas, you will find the Acropolis, a huge shopping mall, big enough to enclose traditional buildings. It’s a little bit of Disneyland with good shoes and stylish shops and no-one in character - unless they are adopting their ‘I am Lithuanian’, ‘I am Polish’, ‘I am Russian’ identity. At night, and from a distance, the lights on its façade make it look like a ocean liner at berth by the water’s side. Before returning to our workshop space, we go down into the crypt of St. Gertrudes, where there is a candle shrine – and it is the warmest place we have found today and it is tempting to fall asleep on the steps. 

In St. Michael the Archangel there is a very different kind of experience awaiting us. Standing at one end of Laisvės Alėja (Freedom Avenue), the church was built in 1891 and functioned as the garrison church for the Tsarist army. It was used as art gallery ‘in Soviet time’ (an expression we hear at least 37 times in one day) and returned to its original use in 1991. Here the artist Robertas Antinis (Jr) has created an installation in the bowels of the church – a one way journey through the catacombs in total darkness. We go in pairs, down a circular metal staircase into the depths, but the caretaker is still nervous – he has had people freak out half way round, when it is to late to turn back. I find myself closing my eyes even though I can’t see anything. I soon lose my companion and I finally emerge on the other side in front of four people who entered the catacombs before me. The curator of the project admits that she has only gone in a few metres before she decided to turn back. She explains how the artist has had a particular interest in working with blind people through his sculptural work. Another wonder perhaps.

The Wonders of Kaunas project is documented on the cultural animation site. The Art Institute are working on a publication for April 2008. Until then you can find out interesting facts about Kaunas at PocketGuide.

I met her in the plaza outside the Centrum Metro station. I was standing by the mural of Beuys and Kantor, trying to keep out of the bitter wind. She came out of the underground, a little flustered I thought. She looked like death warmed up, but pretty nonetheless. I kept this thought to myself. I feel like death warmed up, she said. She needed coffee, immediately - she insisted on nothing more than 10 minutes away. We walked past a military vehicle parked on the corner of Marszałkowska and Jerozolimskie. Militia and soldiers stood around a coal brazier, in a re-enactment of the imposition of Martial Law in Poland, 26 years ago today. The phrase in Polish is more direct - stan wojenny - which translates as “the state of war”. They posed for photographs, looking quite unthreatening and cheerful, with a soundtrack of rock music and folk song against a video screen with footage from the time. I had seen them earlier in the day outside the Church of the Visitation, saying things like, Shall we put him in the back of the suka? This is the blue van, nicknamed ‘the bitch’ where suspects were stashed, to await beating, interrogation or worse. Some old guys were arguing vehemently with the young actors-renactors about the merits or not of General Jaruzelski and his decision. Did it save Poland from a Soviet military invasion? Did it hasten the demise of communist rule?

On the number 25 tram from Praga, I talked to a man who used to work for The Department of Monitoring National Statistics – or so it translated. He saw a bright future for Poland. You can’t imagine what it was like in those times, he said, now we are a part of the European Union and we have freedom of movement. You take this liberty for granted. Freedom of movement, who could imagine such a thing in those times… He believed in the young people of this country. He said some of his friends disagreed, but none of them had ever travelled beyond the confines of their communist borders. He had been to New York once, he said.

There was a different kind of re-enactment earlier, outside Arkadia shopping mall, with bearded serious old men carrying Imperial Polish standards, and pulling a pine coffin on a small cart with the Polish flag laid over it. No-one took their photograph but they marched up and down resolutely demanding some kind of sacrifice to the Nation. No-one could explain it to me. They shrugged their shoulders, suggesting these marching people were a little crazy perhaps. They wanted to go backwards to old times, why weren’t they shopping?

Making our way through the crowds of frenetic shoppers, we went to the top floor of Empik, where we could see the vista of central Warsaw laid out before us, the past and the present layered over each other. Leaden grey earlier in the day, the sky and ground the colour of concrete, the city came to life with the lurid colours of huge advertisements and billboards and festive bulbs. I recalled a friend saying, You know, in the Seventies it was always this grey colour of concrete, even in summer. Not unlike Birmingham, I thought. Now a sea of yellow-orange light - from the Christmas decorations strung up over the façade of the Palace of Culture - washes over the crowds coming and going and over the incessant traffic, making it look like a scene constructed in Photoshop. Now the city after dark is imbued with the bright avarice of commerce.

Looking down on the busy streets,  we drank cappuccino and talked. She had flown in from Stockholm to walk in her beloved childhood woods in Swider, and I had travelled from Kaunas, an eight hour journey by train. There was a guy trying to pick up women in the busy coffee shop, pretending to speak French. Do you always attract such company? she asked. I am afraid so… She talked about the conjunction of the stars and the astrological significance of this particular week, of this particular day, and this particular time. I listened carefully, of course. (Me, Aries, Year of the Monkey, she Virgo, year of the Dragon.) She has told me that one day I will wake and realise this will be the perfect day, and this perfect day will end with us drinking vodka together. The stars say so. The auspices are good.