When the Fairytale Comes Up Empty
COLLISION 00024
If my trip to Vilnius taught me anything, it’s that answering a call to return-again travel doesn’t guarantee an itinerary will unfold like a fairy tale.
The future Mr. Lamb was not sitting counter-side at my Nineteen18 chef’s counter tasting. No one else, in fact, was occupying any of the other eight counter stools.
Nor was he breaking for a glass of wine at the Hotel Pacai Bar, seeking like I was a cool respite from the September scorcher that had come out of nowhere to break up, albeit briefly, who-knows-how-many consecutive days of late summer rain. The Hotel Pacai Bar, that afternoon, come to think of it, was empty, too.
And so was Taurės Wine Bar at Senatoriu Pasazas and every barstool inside Nick and Nora on Thursday night until one young man finally sat down just as I took my very last sip of the smoky maple old-fashioned the bartender had begrudgingly made for me.
On paper and even in my head, this trip had promised to be a turning point of some kind. I was just sure of it. The pull back to Vilnius was too strong not to mean something significant was waiting for me here.
Instead, it seemed from the moment I had arrived I possessed the unwanted touch of a “cooler.” I could show up anywhere, anytime and meet a deathly quiet, empty room. Worse, when rooms were actually full, I struggled to slow time down enough to connect with much of anything, let alone anyone.
On one occasion I tried to buy a vintage cocktail dress. To wear, where? I have no idea! But the shopkeeper just kept hedging about how it hung too loosely. “It doesn’t quite fit,” she had kept saying, scrunching up her face. I thought to myself, but it doesn’t quite not fit either.
Everywhere I turned, I felt like Vilnius was either giving me a cold shoulder or a stiff middle finger. It soon became apparent this trip was a mission shrouded in tough love and suck-it-ups, not the universe making good on long-lost love or sure-to-impress, one-day cocktail party attire.
The reality was, within my first 24 hours of landing in Lithuania, the places I was most eager to try and re-try swept me up in unexpected, torrid undercurrents of negativity. There were hard-to-ignore barbs tossed out here and there from the staff about their places of employ lacking everything from authenticity to imagination. There was indifference and disregard.
I had bristled and tried to shrug each of them off, each time they floated conspicuously in front of me. I had just flown across the world, after all, to enjoy these places just as they were. And usually, the people who worked at the places I had felt drawn to were my favorite point of the experience.
“Had I been to real food halls when I traveled?” one surly and arrogant waiter asked. “That’s where you get the real local food.” His question was laced with nothing but disdain for my having expressed excitement to be enjoying the fare at his food hall.
“Don’t take the cake,” I was told, when it was time to consider dessert at one of my favorite restaurants in Vilnius. “It’s just, well, cake. If you like that kind of thing.” I couldn’t help but shrink a bit in defeat for the pastry chef’s benefit. Trying as I might not to focus on the young waitress’ chipped manicure.
When placing my drink order at a spot I had literally rearranged my schedule and given up sleep to drop into, the server refused to meet my gaze. Annoyed, it seemed, I had the nerve to want to choose just the right cocktail for what would likely be the last time I ever had the pleasure of enjoying one there. “Is this your bar?” I asked him, trying to make small talk. Trying to show him I saw him. “No,” he muttered. “I just work here.”
Was I just seeing a place without the patina of its newness? Was I being grossly entitled? Had I just had a really good streak of encounters and this was how the rest of my travel could be expected to unravel?
Or when we carry some sense of familiarity with us back to a destination, do we see people and their experiences differently? Do we see the fatigue, burnout, disillusion? Reality?
Is my acknowledging disappointment an ugly symptom of being an ugly tourist? I know these people aren’t puppets in some play produced for my entertainment. Had I been projecting some ugly tourist overeagerness and naïveté when I had tried to engage them? Had my American accent put them off? Had I missed a cultural cue?
Maybe Vilnius hadn’t called me back to kill me with kindness, cake and sunshine. Maybe it was meant to be a place I was supposed to pass through on earth and in life to confront and metabolize disenchantment and loneliness.
Maybe Vilnius’ storybook setting wasn’t a stage like I had assumed it would be for happy endings so much as it was instead a backdrop meant to teach me how to create my own meaning when the intersection I arrived at was just… well… empty.
