Polonia /
Why do Lviv & Vilnius look nicer than Polish cities? [16]
Vilnius downtown is much quieter than big Polish towns - apart from govt there is not much commercial activity during the daytime and at night the bars and clubs are in very specific areas.
There isn't much traffic - even on the main drag, Gedimino there are only a few cars and a few buses. A few times I have needed to be at a meeting the other side of town and made it in 10 minutes. In Warsaw or Prague you would start thinking about that an hour beforehand. In Bucharest you probably wouldn't even bother arranging two appointments in the same morning. Sofia is also pretty quiet for traffic though ?
Vilnius does have very ugly suburbs - lots of high rises and some of the osiedle are just as big as in Warsaw or Krakow. All of the shopping is also outside the town centre - it has some enormous, tasteless malls.