Town Hall square in Vilnius. Marsha Barber took five walking tours during her time in the Lithuanian capital.Leonid Andronov/Getty Images
It was supposed to be a trip for two to Lithuania and Poland for my husband, Stephen, and me. Over the decades we’d travelled, between us, to nearly 50 countries.
But Stephen had worsening heart issues. He couldn’t travel but was adamant that he was well enough to get by without me and it was time for me to learn to travel alone again. I’d done many brief trips to international conferences. But this would be the first time I’d done an extensive solo trip in more than 20 years. I’d become too reliant on him, Stephen said. It was time.
I was leery. How would I manage? And outside of work commitments, how would I fill the five weeks we’d booked together?
On the plane, it felt as if everyone were in a couple, a sort of flying Noah’s Ark. I’d rarely felt so alone.
My first night in Vilnius, Lithuania, I had dinner by the river. The chair across from me, where Stephen would normally be sitting, looked very empty. I hoped it wouldn’t be a lonely trip.
But then, on my second day in Vilnius, I found an unexpected solution: the Vilnius with Locals website, offering pay-what-you-choose walking tours. What a find! For someone learning to travel independently once again, these explorations would come to define the trip.
The Royal Castle in Warsaw.Marsha Barber/Supplied
During my time in Vilnius, I took five walking tours. Each night I sent Stephen photos. If he couldn’t travel, he’d take the trip vicariously. Every morning, I laced up my white running shoes and headed out for a 2½-hour tour. Vilnius is a small, walkable city and its old town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The highlight was Uzupis. On April 1, 1997, the artists and creatives of Vilnius declared the one-square-kilometre district an independent artists’ republic. Who cared if the rest of the world didn’t see it that way?
The district even has its own constitution. We walked to see its 41 clauses, mounted on a wall and translated into more than two dozen languages.
The first clause reads: “Everyone has the right to live by the River Vilnele, and the River Vilnele has the right to flow by everyone.” Other clauses include: “Everyone has the right to die, but this is not an obligation.” Because the founders were animal lovers, some clauses relate to dogs and cats, such as clauses 12 and 13: “A dog has the right to be a dog,” and “A cat is not obliged to love its owner, but must help in time of need.”
That tour, and several of the others, was led by Ieva, a trained guide with a background in history and cultural studies. Her depth of knowledge set the tone.
Everyone has a story, and as we walked the cobblestone streets, I got a glimpse into who group participants were, and a chance to chat with them in English, French and German. A tattooed Polish woman who was now a professor at a Swedish university invited me to an art exhibit opening that evening. I spent a lovely hour there learning about Lithuanian art. Like others, the professor had come to Lithuania because it wasn’t a common tourist destination. Some travellers were tracing lost ancestors. I, too, had family from Vilnius. My grandmother left in 1903 because of the pogroms.
On the tour of Jewish Vilnius, I followed in the footsteps of my grandmother, along the streets of the former Jewish quarter, through the ghetto and into the beautiful old synagogue she may have attended.
The walks were full of surprises. Turning onto one street, in the shadows we saw a familiar statue of an intense slim man in a hat. It was Leonard Cohen, a famous descendent of Lithuanian Jews. I sent Stephen the photo that night, from my rented apartment.
Other tours gave a sense of the city Vilnius has become today, with its blazing street art and vibrant alternative scene. The place has come a long way, based on the tour of Communist Vilnius where, as we walked, our guide described what it was like lining up for hours to buy a loaf of bread, until independence from the Soviet Union in 1990.
For a solo traveller, these tours were perfect. They were frequent and flexible. You could just show up and register. And they offered enough connection with truly interesting globetrotters to scratch any social itch.
On my last day in Vilnius, Ieva gave me the gift of a chocolate map of Lithuania because of my enthusiastic participation. I ate it in one delicious sitting.
When I told a friend, she asked if I was eating my feelings. I missed Stephen and worried about him even though family was keeping a close eye on him. But here’s the thing: I grew to feel exhilaratingly competent when it came to the challenges of daily life. That was a new feeling.
My husband prides himself on taking care of our home, including managing money, food shopping and cooking, something I was never good at.
Now, here I was, figuring out how to get keys from apartment lockboxes that seemed to have been designed by the inventor of Rubik’s Cube. Here I was, shopping in neighbourhood supermarkets where I had to find things by asking in Lithuanian or Polish, and where cashiers yelled at me because I was in the wrong line.
On the cusp of my 70th birthday, I started to feel like some sort of septuagenarian superhero. One who could adapt quickly and even fry salmon on an Airbnb gas stove without starting a fire.
After crossing the border into Poland, I continued pay-what-you-choose tours with Walkative. There, tour group numbers were larger and the tours more information-dense. My first guide pulled maps and graphics out of his backpack. But every walk was an invigorating glimpse into a new city led by a well-informed storyteller.
In both Lithuania and Poland, most tour takers appeared to give a voluntary tip of anywhere from €5 to €20, one of the best deals in Europe.
Many days my iPhone recorded more than 20,000 steps. After a guided tour, I’d often return to an art gallery we’d walked past or to look inside a castle or library. Sometimes I’d stumble on a street festival or other summer celebration.
As I found my rhythm, this adventuring didn’t feel much different from travelling solo 50 years earlier. The same carefree sense of freedom. The same jolts of nervousness and excitement when arriving in a new place. The only differences were the odd knee twinge and, as a woman, the advantage of not being hit on as often.
After walking tours in Vilnius, Warsaw and Krakow, I arrived in Lodz. The former industrial centre of Poland had no pay-what-you-choose tours so it was necessary to adapt. For the first time, I took a private walking tour with a guide.
When I mentioned I had ancestors from Lodz, the guide, Milena, asked for details. With no other information than the names of my paternal great aunts, Masza (Masha) and Helena Berber, Milena pulled up Polish databases. As a result of her research, I found the homes where my aunts had lived as children, and where Masza had lived with her husband, young son and unmarried sister, Helena, right before the war. The story grew darker after that, as all four were sent to the ghetto and, ultimately, murdered in the death camps. With Milena, I traced their footsteps, a meaningful if devastating walk.
Just before I returned home, Stephen ended up in hospital. Once I was there by his side, we passed much of his stay looking at photos and videos from my trip. This took us out of the grey hospital room and onto the sun-splashed streets of Europe.
And when Stephen finally returned home, and recovered slowly, my independent travels benefited us both. I was able to take over the domestic sphere without missing a beat.