Linas Has a Party

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life...or whatever.

I'd like you to come to a party, there will be some very colorful people there.

DJ Linas in da house. Linas threw an 80's theme party, some people were not quite clear on the decade in question...or the pop culture cycle was really off during that time.

Enough Russian vodka, and whiskey and ginger (I had to introduce a Colorado favorite didn't I?) and no one cares what decade it is.

The night begins...

...with me wandering into a strange crowd of people and a backpack full of whiskey and ginger ale. Shortly thereafter they were no longer strangers.

And the beat drops...

...early in the night the enthusiasm for dancing was at a fever pitch.

And the beat goes on...

...Linas had a well thought out and intelligently crafted play-list for the decade theme of the party. It fell victim to alcohol and requests (read demands) after a while.

Linas' younger brother

I found out later that i had met Linas' younger brother. At the time he was just some dude in a wig.

Linas and Muzi

The night before we went stopped by the main square to see what was drawing such a big crowd and met a new friend Muzi, from South Africa, he was in town for the design conference "spring design week" (iconograda). We bonded over our shared revulsion at the sugar-coated-pop-fest that was Eurovision, the mysterious event that was drawing such a big crowd to the main square.

Needless to say, Muzi was at the party.

Remas holding it down

...nuf said.




At the end of everything Linas, Remas (pictured above) and I were the only ones left, pathetic I know, and we devolved into drunken heartfelt conversations and insisting on playing specific songs for each other. I know we were at least respectably drunk because to this day Linas will bring up a band that I just have to listen to and not remember that he already played it for me...that night. 

The Tamsta Muzika Festivalis Movie and Club

I went with Linas to the "Tamasta Music Club", a jazzy little joint with food and drinks in an old-school-Vegas-lounge setting. 

The reason we were there that night was to watch a screening of the movie shot at last year's "Tamsta Muzika Festivalis", it happens every year and this year it will be just before I leave to go back to Colorado...so much like how I got on a plane to come to Lithuania int he first place, I will be leaving a concert to board a plane with no sleep, and will wake up in Warsaw once again with a sense that something is missing.

It's a lot like Woodstock, but in Lithuanian. The film takes us on the trip to the festival and setting up a tent in the camp grounds nearby, and then its on to the music. We get backstage interviews and performance footage galore. There are two stages and the bands span from just starting out, to classic (read old) acts that were the first on the scene when the communists left (and before, only underground).

The movie is rad, and afterword some of the the bands from the festival put on a little show at the club. The stars were what i like to think of as the Lithuanian Eagles...classic (old).

http://tamstamuzika.lt/

The "What To Have for Lunch Everyday" + Tadas and Rema

Tadas and Rema work across the hall from me.

Almost every day, like clockwork, Tadas will appear in the door and say "lunch?", at this point i began to salivate because of the Pavlovian response this triggers. This is because very early on in my time here Arunas, Tadas, and Rema, began taking me to a place called "Bistro" for lunch. It was there that i discovered the wonderful world of Cepelinai su mėsa...my life, my taste-buds, and my stomach, have never fully recovered, we just suffer through life in an eternal Cepelinai withdrawal until i hear that magic word again. 

There have been other foods, and other diners, but "Bistro" remains a constant in my life, and the Cepelinai su mėsa remain delicious.  Once they took me to a cafeteria that had once been open only to the employees of the library but was now available to the public. They also had good Cepelinai su mėsa...and chicken Kiev. Really everything i have eaten here so far has been an amazing assault on my taste-buds and preconceptions about potatoes. 

...with one exception

Chinese food here is not the best, it only even attempts to cover a very narrow piece of the Chinese food spectrum, and even then only with utilitarian effort. But one place created such an exceptionally bad version of this cuisine that everyone eating it (save one) swore to never return to that fateful building.  That one was Rema, since she is a vegetarian she was spared the horrific war-crime of a meal the rest of us experienced. 

I can't remember the name of the restaurant, probably because my mind created a scab over that piece of memory as a survival mechanism. But i will find out and update this entry, so that it may serve as a warning to all those who may come after me. 

Update: the place is called "Rytai"—consider yourself warned.