Fort Ninth

Devinitas Fortas

Well the littles went to Poland so we decided to make a trip into Kaunas, a town about 90km away. We heard about Fort Ninth and after reading the short description above we knew we wanted I visit. I am glad to have Paige because like me she is studying WWII and she gets it. Anyway decision made. Now how to get there. Take local bus to stotis: central station. Go in and pray the woman understands some English. She hands is a piece of paper that says platform 6 and 11:45. On arriving at Platform 6 which would have been way cooler if it had been platform 6 3/4. We saw.... Dun dun dun a dreaded Fiji mini bus! Okay it wasn't from Fiji and it wasn't as bad but it was still a van bus. So we climb in and the man just looks at us. We are holding money but he does nothing. So we sit down and think maybe he collects money later. Then another man starts  going off about not having tickets. Well we end up paying and it's 20 litas which sheesh we didn't expect. An hour and a half later with the old man who can't stay in the road lines later we arrive at a station. Somewhere in Kaunas. Back inside with hopes that we can find how to get from here to the fort. She hands is another paper with time and platform. 

Meanwhile bathroom break. 1 lita later I am staring at this 

Why.

Why. I literally turned around and walked out. I checked another "stall" same hole in the ground. I'm not in China for another three months so why am I staring at a squatter!?

That was not fun. Which is the front? Which is the back? How do you even do this? So glad I paid for this experience.

That one time at the bus station with the hole in the ground...

Yah. 

So get on minibus #2 but we have no idea where to get off. Luckily some girl helped us out. Between her, the driver and another man we got off... On the side of the freeway. No joke. So there we are standing on the side of the freeway. Hmmmm. Looking around there is a tunnel. Sure why not walk through the dark tunnel under the freeway. We survived. And guess what there it was!

Woohoo!

The next problem was trying to buy tickets. It literally took like five minutes which is a long time when people are in line. We couldn't he he credit card to work then we couldn't figure out how to get a guide. Finally we got tickets and got started. 

The first part was artifacts and part two was the fort with a guide. Except in our case we will call her an exercise instructor with some knowledge of a fort. Literally this lady had us running up and down underground tunnels and passages and every few minutes she would stop spit some info at us and then take us back up to heart pounding heavy breathing. Fastest "tour" of my life. Here are some facts I managed to write down on that journey. 

Built forts to protect Kaunas 

9th fort is made from concrete and the other 8 are made from brick this was the most modern one 

World war 1 nothing happen with this fort

Then it becAme a prison 

Hard labor camp- they had to work in fields or keeping the animals 

During WWII jail was a point to decide where to put political to prisoners 

Monument was just a field  -50k people killed on that spot 30k were Jews 

Then soviets came back and used as prison again

Metal doors in prison are 100 years old 

1943 on Christmas 64 people escaped they put 400 holes Into the door with a drill and then pushed a hole through it and escaped 

The nazi needed to catch and kill them. 11 survived the last survivor wrote a book called escape note to self order that book 

After getting a serious cardio in we went outside to the monument. The monument stands where 30,000 Jews were murdered. They use that word and I think it has so much more power than killed. 30,000 that is such a huge number. And at that spot in total 50,000 people were killed. That's bigger than an entire town. The monument was huge!

The sky was gorgeous today. The monument has faces and people on it. You can kind of see it in the first picture. 

When we were done at the fort we needed to figure out how to get back into town so we went to the freeway and sat on a bench until a bus came. But literally we used every penny we had and came up with exactly the amount we needed. I got on and handed the man the huge handful of pennies and he looked at me, pulled out the lita and handed me back all the crap coins. He didn't even want those coins I've been carrying around for weeks. Just get rid of them already.