Jurgis Giedrys was a student, aged 20, in January 1991, when the Soviet troops stormed into key buildings in his home city of Vilnius, determined to quash Lithuania's ever-increasing momentum for independence.
Riots ensued all over the city. In the suburbs, Lithuanians held a peaceful round-the-clock vigil outside their TV tower, trying to protect their links with the international community by stopping the Soviets from occupying the tower.
"I was out on the streets with everyone else, of course I was," Mr Giedrys, who is now the deputy director at the Small Theatre of Vilnius, remembers. "This wasn't just a students' protest. Everyone was out on the streets, of all ages and backgrounds."
When the Soviets tried to take the TV tower by force that same January, 14 peaceful protesters were shot dead, thereby evoking both national and international outrage and the catalyst for Lithuania's independence later that year.
Eight years later, Vilnius' eye-catching, rocket-like TV tower is still clearly visible on the horizon, and the flowers and candles of a memorial are still there at its base, but the city it overlooks has undergone huge changes. Svetlana Ragelskaja is the receptionist at the simple 1970s-style 21-room Zaliasis Tiltas Hotel on Gedimino.
"Before independence, we used to only have tour groups stay here. Mostly Polish. There were no people arriving on their own," she says. "Now, these last few years, it is the business people I see most." She looks through the hand-written hotel register for the last week; among the residents' addresses are those from Austria, Japan, Britain and Italy.
The current fixed exchange rate is four litas to the dollar. One lita buys a rose; seven buys a McDonald's Big Mac; and 20 will buy a 100 gram jar of Nescafe.
Ms Ragelskaja earns 700 litas a month, or $175. There may well be more money in Lithuania these days, but she's not making much of it. Further along Gedimino is a Benetton shop, where a single item of clothing costs about half of Ragelskaja's monthly salary. "For me, it's not a problem," she says. "I don't want to buy those clothes. But my eleven-year-old daughter does."
Vilnius is clean and cold. The wind whips down the tramlines and cobbled streets of the Old Town, which has been repainted and renovated extensively over the last few years. The street stalls of the amber sellers are overshadowed by cranes and scaffolding. A newly-opened Radisson Hotel stands on the corner of Arkliu Gatve, and there are shops selling Italian designer clothes in an adjoining street. Mr Giedrys steps into the courtyard of his old university in the heart of the Old Town and looks down in astonishment. "They've repaved it," he explains. "There used to be cobblestones here. That's happened only in the last three months."
For a western visitor, there is an odd sensation of the juxtaposition of two different dimensions of time in Vilnius. In a city that sells Versace, a man in a restaurant adds up my bill with a few swift clicks on a abacus. Every second person on the street is carrying a mobile phone, but the heating is still centrally controlled, as it was before independence. The temperature has to have been below a certain degree for several days before the city's heating will be turned on. Ms Ragelskaja hands out extra blankets for the residents of her hotel who feel the cold.
Vilnius-born Sigitas Baltuska is a commercial adviser for the Royal Danish Embassy. "The changes in Lithuania have come later, but faster, than those in Eastern Europe," he says.
He hesitates. "Sometimes, though, I think the Lithuanian people are not yet used to the idea of enterprise. They are used to people pushing them, not doing the pushing themselves." Mr Baltuska wants to see Lithuania enter the EU. "But there has never been a referendum here to ask the people if they want to join the EU," he points out. "It has just been assumed that we all want it, but the government will have to ask the people what they want."
The other two Baltic States, Latvia and Estonia, may share a generic name, but Lithuanians are keen to stress all three states are completely different "The Western media always lump us together," growls Mr Giedrys. Daiva Dapsiene, who works at the American Embassy as a cultural affairs specialist, and also as a translator, agrees with him.
"Lithuania was the only state which used to be a kingdom. It had fixed boundaries, unlike Latvia and Estonia, who were always being assimilated into other countries.
"Half the population of Estonia, for instance, is Russian." However, Mr Giedrys and Ms Dapsiene agree - reluctantly - that they think it will be Estonia which will be the first to enter the EU.
The comprehensive and interesting weekly Baltic Times is the only English language newspaper which reports on news and features from the three States, with a staff of both local and western reporters. Published from Latvia's capital, Riga, it costs three litas. It also keeps the zealous eye of the recently independent on what's written about the Baltics in the Western media.
An October story entitled Lat- vians put under tabloid torch, comments on a story which had recently run in London's Sunday Times about "gulag factory labour" in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, and which was "scathingly critical of two factories in Latvia". The Baltic Times's Philip Birzulis goes on to criticise the Sunday Times story, saying that when he spoke to one of the main sources cited by the British paper, Baiba Bucina, he maintained that "absolutely nothing has been written (in the Sunday Times) as I said it." Birzulis's main point in the story is that the Western media in general tend to be confused in their coverage of the Baltics: "Since stories about the Baltics appear so rarely in the Western press, Latvians say it would be nice if those scarce column inches were, if not favourable, then at least fair."
In 1991, a couple of months after Lithuania became independent, Ms Dapsiene travelled to the US. It was her first time out of the country. Her Aeroflot flight stopped in Shannon to refuel, and she got off the plane to look at the shops in the Duty Free. It was her first glimpse of the Western world.
"I could not believe my eyes," she remembers. "I looked at all those clothes and first I felt like I was in a museum - that I could look but not touch. I had only ever seen pictures of these clothes before. I could hardly believe they were real. Then I thought that someone would come up behind me and say: `You're just a poor Russian, you can't afford anything.' But nobody did. I remember finally getting the courage to touch a red velvet scarf, and realising for the first time that I was really free; that my life and country had changed."
"There have been big changes in Lithuania since 1991," reflects Mr Giedrys. "But for me, the best changes have been the psychological ones - the way we see ourselves now, and how we are not afraid all the time - rather than the material ones."
The material still counts, though. Leaving Vilnius, when I bought the only bottle of Scotch whisky in the supermarket as a gift for my hosts, the woman at the till looked on in amazement as I removed the price label. "No, no," she admonished me, and stuck it back on again in a prominent position. For some Lithuanians, displaying how much something costs is still obviously something to be proud of, and not something to be discreet about.