From Russia with Lunch Read Online Free Page A

failed to account for the fact that Lithuanians drive on the right-hand side of the road and blithely stepped into the path of a bright red trolley bus as it rounded a corner. The driver was a woman – as most trolley bus drivers in Vilnius are – who was wearing a t-shirt with a sequinned tiger motif, a shell-suit jacket and a bouffant beehive that could have stopped a bullet. Rolling her eyes, she muttered what I presumed to be a disparaging aside to a hunched man seated on a stool beside her. He wasn’t wearing a uniform either and I later found out that the city’s public transport employees frequently take along a partner or friend to break the monotony of a shift. Talk about your quality time.
    Some of Gedimino Prospektas’ handsome buildings are home to glittering stores, and European retail powerhouses such as Zara and Marks & Spencer are beginning to stake their claim for the locals’ cash. There are a few addresses, however, which are occupied by structures of more contemporary design along with some rationalist – read duller than an actuarial thesis – piles. One of the most alluring is the National Drama Theatre, the façade of which is a fluid masterpiece of concrete and glass topped by a sculptured trio of black stone muses with gold faces. Exquisite and aquiline, each – tragedy, comedy, drama – leans towards the street as if they have secrets to share.
    Of equal allure are the Lithuanian women. (At which point, I feel compelled to point out that this lone traveller is a happily married man who was due to be met by his wife Jennie for a few days of R&R in Vilnius after the journey’s end.) Pardon my testosterone, but the place is a goddess factory. Somewhere in the Vilnian backblocks is a facility pumping out sapphire-eyed Kate Beckinsales and Heidi Klums on an alternating roster. There also seems to be a midriff statute in place for women and few seem inclined to break the law. If their cheekbones were singers, every one would be a soprano. Thankfully, the Botox epidemic has not yet tainted this nation and when these women laugh and smile they do so with their entire faces. Gedimino Prospektas is also home to Vilnius’ one McDonald’s store. No Starbucks, no Krispy Kreme, no KFC to be seen. Which probably accounts for the incredibly low hipster to muffin top ratio. The men, on the other hand, have hard eyes and soft mouths. Make eye contact with a Lithuanian and they will not break it until you do. It is not aggressive but assertive. A statement of presence which will hold your gaze.
    The street empties into a square that is the city’s focal point. At its heart stands the imposing Cathedral Basilica of St Stanislaus and St Vladislaus. A neoclassical statement of New Testament might, it is located on the site of the country’s first church, which was built in 1251. Like many of Lithuania’s houses of Christian worship, it was erected on the original location of a pagan temple – in this case that of Perkunas, God of Thunder. For a Jewish lad, I have a disproportionate fondness for the architectural majesty of churches and this one was a belter. Designed along a grid of regular geometric division, it features a triangular pediment atop six unadorned columns and relief work in the niches. The inside is a virtual gallery of fourteenth century frescos. The magnificent biblical scenes came courtesy of Italian painter Constanino Villani while the marble-framed altar in the St Casimir chapel features carved angels so realistic you find yourself searching the floor for stray feathers. However, it’s what’s on the roof of this cathedral that makes it so enthralling. A golden ten-metre-high cross held by a statue of Jesus has been positioned to catch the sunlight just so and for an hour every twilight, the square is bathed in its bullioned reflection.
    Out the front of the cathedral is a 57-metre-high, tripletiered belfry that was once a