Paul de Vroom made a personal discovery:

Visiting Vilnius, Lithuania, in search of contact with the local architectural world he stumbled across the Independent Republic of Užupis, an ideosyncratic state lead by a large community of artists. Crossing the Vilnia river means crossing a real border as the sign indicates.

Being villager of the independent Vila de Gracia in Barcelona and likewise, passenger on the Motorship ‘Noordereiland’, the island which is temporarely anchored at Rotterdam, Paul felt the fever of indepence rise. The State of Užupis was proclaimed in 1997, two years after local artists gave Vilnius a world premiere: the first ever bronze statue of Frank Zappa. From the start the Republic had it all: a constitution, a flag and an anthem, a government, passport stamps, currency and an army of eleven, which lasted for only a week or so. Paul will return very soon in order to establish diplomatic relationships between Užupis and MS Noordereiland, after all both are closely associated in some way with the Paris’ Montmartre. In the next report Paul will also explain why the Užupian urban renewal is so exemplary.