In Nida II - Bigger, Blacker, and Something-something

I'm going, going. Back. Back. To Nida, Nida.

My Plans are Made for Me

I don't usually get too involved in planning a trip, event, or my life in general, and this time was no different. Gaile and her friend Laura informed me and Linas that we were going to Nida for the weekend...2 weeks in advance, exactly long enough for me to forget completely about it and attempt to go with Vytas to Poland with his band. Fortunately Gaile is very good and keeping everyone in line and Vytas was informed that I had already "made" plans for this weekend.

It was only because of my failed attempt to double-book my weekend that I was reminded of the trip, and therefore packed a bag in advance, unlike the previous trip where all the packing was done in a semi-drunk blur.

We were picked up by Laura, who had the company car...and gas card, in a parking lot near our office...Linas and I brought our bags to work with us so we could leave as soon as the day was over. We all crammed into the almost roomy-enough toyota; Mer, Linas, Gaile, Laura, and her cousin, who lived in Nida and was coming with but just for the ride up.

Road trip games are even more fun when they are in a language you don't speak

About halfway there we all ran out of small talk and I ran out of questions about language and history, so...we did what all people do on medium to long car trips, we looked for inane games to pass the time. What we began to play resembled "20 questions" where one person thinks of a person, place, or thing, and the others try and guess it in 20  yes-or-no questions. However, in this version, there was no limit to the number of questions, the "yes-or-no" rule was really a loose guideline, and the word you could think of was any word (existential concept or anything)...in any language. Needless to say it was sufficiently engaging for the trip.

Awkward sleeping arrangements

Our place in Nida was a piece of a house that had been
segmented into several apartments. Ours included,
what had been, an outside patio but had been walled in
and now housed the couch and kitchen. Rad. 

We arrive in Nida just before sunset, drop off Laura's cousin at the hotel she "lives" in, and spend some time searching the complex of cottages and apartments that is Nida, for the place we are staying. After negotiation the cost (I believe that haggling is another Lithuanian national sport, just like basketball) we unload the car and survey the two beds in one room, and a pull out couch in another, arrangement. No one wants to be the first to say it, but someone is either getting the shaft here, or getting to know one of the others very well.

Gaile and Laura took the big bed, Linas set up camp by the couch and gave me the cot/bed for which I was very grateful but also felt vaguely guilty. A reasonable solution which, for some reason, completely failed to alleviate any of the tension obviously surrounding this (I was beginning to think my man Linas, although fantastic at knowing and picking up ladies, was a habitual NBC). Gaile cut the tension by turning on the TV, finding VH1, and cranking up the Beyonce. At which point she plopped on the bed and proclaimed that she was just going to watch trashy tv the entire time we were there.

How much can you drink when you don't have to pay for it right now?

Faxe. At the bar. 

We peel Gaile off the bed and we all walk over to our favorite bar in Nida, Faxe. As we get closer I can hear the sounds of live music, which is always easily distinguished from recorded music by the shitty-ness of the execution, coming from the bar.

Inside is a 4 piece bad, playing, what sounds like, early 90's alternative jams. But the bar is not crowded, and I sidle up the bar to order some whiskey. However, when I try and pay for my drink Laura stops me, we are all drinking on her cousin's tab tonight and we will settle up before we leave town...a dangerous situation.

1, 2, 3, Booze! We drink, we talk, and we listen to some unoffensive music—which is being performed by a group Gaile and Laura claim was big when they were teenagers, and they both say they had a crush on the singer. After five or six double whiskeys, Me and Linas are talked into switching to Trejos devynerios ("999") and apple juice, a delicious drink that the girls have been consuming like water all night. We leave without paying, as promised, and stumble back to the apartment, we don't know how much we have drank (it was a lot) or how much it cost, but we (and you) will find out soon enough.

I swam in the Baltic!

In Vino, in Nida

The next day was all about the beach, but first, we headed over to In Vino, in Nida, for some legendary breakfast...we were all a little worse for wear from the night before and the sun and slow service made us even grumpier. All was bright and cheery after we ate though...like magic.

Then it was off to the beach, with a quick stop for ice-cream on the way, and several moments spent admiring the in-depth series of pictograms and signs that get more and more intense as you get closer and closer to the water.

signs, signs, everywhere there's signs

There were signs for weather, features, gender, clothing options (all or none), bathrooms, lifegaurds, and many that i couldn't even begin to understand...but they were all entertaining. The various methods of representing gender (as you can vaguely see in the photo to the right) as best as possible on androgynous silhouettes that are only distinguished in form by the length of their arms, all fail when you remove the clothing from the icon.

We got to the beach early in the afternoon, walking past all the families and aging rich people, and claiming our own stretch of pale, sandy, beach. The last time i was here i did not get in the water since it was still very cold, this time i was going to swim, but the trauma of feeling how cold the water was last time was still weighing heavily on my mind. So i watched while old men and naked screaming babies easily swam out into the baltic and told myself "if they can do it so can i".

It was cold, but not too cold, and once i was in it was very nice. The strangest thing was how shallow the water stayed for as far as i could walk. It was no more that knee height for at least 60 yards, and after that never quite hip heigh, there were people standing in the baltic so far out that they were just dots to my eyes. It's not a sand bar, and it's not some isolated feature, the shores on this side of the baltic just take a really long time to submerge beneath the water. The slope is very slight and the land just continues, at an almost flat trajectory, under the water.

...and then it rained

The rain came and went several times that day, and we, along with all the other beach goers, would seek occasional refuge at our favorite beach-side bar (the one that Linas and I drank mimosas at). It was a good excuse to drink a little each time.

The sun came back, and we continued to wander the beach, sometimes sunbathing, other times just swimming. Eventually Linas and I began to collect the flat, round stones from the area and skip them out over the water. I hadn't done this since I was small, and it was awkward at first, until it came back to me. Then, as all men/boys will do, we started to see just how far we could throw a rock and if we could hit one of the bowies far out in the distance...we came close. I knew I was too old for this kind of behavior when my arm started to hurt from throwing...that isn't supposed to happen.

Aš visada noru valgyti + Over-eating is my speciality

After a long day of being a jack-ass at the beach, i was hungry. The one lithuanian phrase i have used more than any other is "Aš visada noru valgyti", roughly it means "I can always eat"...which i can.

We went to the second of the two restaurants in town and i ordered food intended for three people. I ate it, and some of the food the girls did not finish. It was an unwise decision, but i couldn't help myself, it was delicious.

That night we all got alcohol at the grocery store, along with snacks, and watched the movies i had downloaded onto my Xoom...it worked perfectly and would have been ideal for one or two people, four was a stretch.

Leaving town

We almost forgot to pay our bar tab on the way out of town, but we remembered just in time and Laura ran into Faxe to pay up.

How much can we drink? Over 300 litas worth, and the drinks were only 5-10 each.

Misheard song lyrics

The ride back contained fewer games, but the same number of people as Laura's cousin was also getting a ride this direction. The lack of road games made space for the music ont he radio, and it was fantastic to hear the various english words Laura's cousin believed were in some of the songs (mostly hair metal hits form the 80's...good stuff).

Cookies-cockies

We stopped for a coffee and cake snack, where i was introduced to the concept of "cookies-cockies" it is a brand of sugar cookies with a rooster on the wrapper, great for making delicious Lithuanian coffee cakes, and for making Americans choke on their latte when they hear it.

In Linas' Village + Generations

Riding in Trains with Sad People

I suppose my idea of trains in Europe was a little romanticized, but even with that in mind the train ride to Linas' village was underwhelming.

We avoided our earlier travel mistakes and got to the station with plenty of time. We ate some soup, boarded the train, and were on our way. The car we were in was not crowded, and contained no bicyclists (they were confined to the back of the train with their futuristic cyclopedes) most of the occupants were either very young or very old, and they all smelled vaguely of failure.

...that being said, it was a very pleasant trip. The scenery flew by, the air was fresh, and even without any cooling or heating system inside the train the temperature was perfect. The best part was the sticker on the window asking us not to throw either bottles or people out of the windows, i guess it could have meant we shouldn't throw them IN the window since the perspective of the illustration was not terribly informative, but that seems unlikely. Linas explained to me that there were in fact ninja clubs that jumped out of these very-narrow train windows while moving. Some people's kids.

Generations

The village itself was everything i hoped it would be. the houses were grouped together, with amazing farm machinery arranged over well manicured and truly bucolic lawns. There were kids swimming in a centrally-located pond, and a cow on a string grazing next to them. The dog was friendly and excited to see us and Linas' parents also seemed happy to meet me and see their son, although they didn't hop around quite as much as the dog did.

We went on a mission to the general store (one of two in the village) to buy some snacks and for me to get a bottle of wine for Linas' parents. When we got there, however, the store was closed and we would be forced to wait for the clerk to get back from a lunch/break before we could shop. Fortunately the store is simply half of a duplex house and the other half belongs to Linas' grandparents. We dropped in for a visit.

Grandparents are the same everywhere. Their house was big and beautiful, every detail obviously crafted over many generations. They were, however, sitting on folding chairs in the kitchen watching a small tv that was perched on a counter, surrounded by various herbs drying. Grandparents, what are you gonna do?

There were exactly as excited as Linas' dog to have company, even though they have very dutiful grandchildren and their kids live a few houses over. They took us into the nice living room, pulled out some very string smelling "millers" liqueur. And proceeded to guilt us into taking several shots in a row and eating some very rich and delicious cakes. Linas' heroically extracted us from this very pleasant social trap, and we went out the front door to discover that the shop was open again. Victory! We bought wine, white for his parents, and red to mix with sprite...delicious.

The food. Was. Amazing! 

You know how people say "there's no cooking like country cooking" or "you haven't eaten (blank) until you've eaten my mother's (blank)"? Or if they don't say that the voices in my head do. Well those people (and my voices) are right. Linas' mother's food was spectacular. Everything I ate was the best thing i had ever eaten. I have since tried to re-create here breakfast crepes and have come nowhere close to the magnificence that was here cooking.

Biker Parents

Durring the evening Linas' parents suited up in full leathers and rode off together on his father's chopper. An honest-to-god chopper. This meant that we were left to our own devices for the evening and after we had exhausted the fun to be had from badmitten, we hauled out his mother's guitar, and sat around in the back yard, drinking, playing, and generally causing a ruckus. We tried writing songs about what was around us for a while*, but that eventually degenerated into me playing every bad cover song I knew...it had been a while since I had held a guitar and I apologize to Linas' village, and the universe in general.

Bonfire of the Backyard

When it is dark and there is nothing around, and you have a lot of wood at your disposal you can build a really large fire. Linas's dag got back after we had some meat cooking and took charge of our meager bonfire. In his hands it grew into a beast and the beer started to flow freely.

Dinner was awesome, and the night got even more awesome when Linas' uncle and his wife showed up. His uncle had brought a personal breathalyzer, the kind that looks like one of the old Nokia cell phones, and immediately started testing everyone. When you have a numerical value assigned to your drunkenness it seems to make things a little competitive 

We had been drinking red wine and sprite all day, and now were drinking some very good local beers...things were getting loose. The weird thing was, it wasn't me and Linas. We were pretty much exhausted from all the drinking and doing nothing all day, and around 2 am we turned in and passed out.

And Then...

In the morning we discovered that the old folk had kept the party going well past dawn and were, in fact, still drunk. We ate breakfast, and waited for his uncle to sober up enough to drive us back into the city (because the train was sad, that's why).

We carried water from the pond for the flower and vegetable garden, and i felt very rustic and like i had accomplished a great deal of physical labor...I wasn't and i had not.

Eventually Linas' uncle sobered up and we said our goodbyes for now, I even got to take his mothers guitar home with me for a while since it was obvious that i was jonesin' for a sting fix.

*My dog is very hungry and those chickens look delicious is the name of the #1 hit song Linas and I wrote while at his parents house. Apparently his dog is notorious in the village for ruthlessly slaughtering anything that squawks. 

In Nida

I apologize in advance for the utter lack of pictures for this escapade. I was busy living the events and forgot to document them at all.

A Party in the Woods

Linas sent me an invitation to a party: WILD WOODS FIESTA II: DIVING INTO GREEN

"Praeitą pavasarį 150 žmonių savo apsilankymu mums pasakė “like”. Muzika, atrakcijos ir laužai kiekvienam dalyviui padarė tokį įspūdį, kad WWF I buvo aptarinėjama daug mėnesių. Šiemet legendomis apipinta Svajonių vila atgimsta, kad savo ištikimiems gerbėjams ir vylingų istorijų prisiklausiusiems padovanotų nepamirštamą naktį. "—an excerpt from the invite...use google translate on this and enjoy the hilarity.

Friday night. We catch a cab to the outskirts of town, it's an affluent neighborhood, some guys that all rent a house together are throwing the party on their property. The house is set back in the woods and other than the house there is no sign of civilization around you.

When we arrive the last band is finishing up. They are a 5 piece horn section with a drummer and if Ska had a baby with a marching band, and that baby was a fan of reggae and dance hall, this would be that baby.

After the bands are done the DJs emerge from whatever dark holes they hide in while music is being made. Que the techno-pop. 

The night is a blur of people, crowds dancing, and lots of bottles of various alcoholic beverages being passed around. We meet a group of three guys who have set up camp there, they are traveling across Europe together, they started in Finland. One is from Finland, one is from Germany, and the other from Bosnia. We all speak in English. Our group of misfits looking for trouble consists of myself, the three travelers, Linas, and 2 girls that Linas knows.

We wander through the night and the house watching the revelers enjoy the party and meeting the inhabitants of the house, who are welcoming like the good hippies they are.  Peace and love and you tube videos projected on the walls for all. The upstairs balcony has a great view of the party; the dj spinning on the stage below, the dancers under the tap in front of him, and the camp-fires of the visitors twinkling int he woods.

The party rages on and as the sun is slowly rising we find ourselves around a still smoldering camp-fire, eating the remains of fire-bakes potatoes right out of the tin foil, with the homemade butter of one of our companions for a condiment. Delicious.

The sun is up and it is starting to rain.

No Sleep Til Nida

5am, Saturday morning. Me and Linas catch a cab back to the city, throw some money at the driver, and dash off to our houses. I tear my room apart, tossing clothes and electronics alike around the room, and stuff whatever I can think of into a backpack. There is no way we are making the 5:50 bus.

I run to meet Linas outside of his place, and together we set off through the pouring rain to the bus station. My legs are burning from lack of sleep and the fast walking pace but we are making good time, but not good enough to be there by 5:50, we know there is a 6:00 bus as well so we decide to stop at the McDonald's outside the bus station to eat since we have been drinking all night with only a portion of a burnt potato for food.


The bus schedule is inaccurate to say the least, and we kill an hour waiting for the bus to Kaunas, which is our first stop on the way to Nida.

The bus ride is hot and cramped, but I am so exhausted that I fall asleep with no problems and only wake up as we are pulling into a rest stop with an urgent need to relieve myself...perfect timing (puikus). 

The Sea-port of Kaunas

Waking up in Kaunas

Another round of fevered sleep and we are in Kaunas. We peel ourselves off the seats and stumble out into the harsh light of midday.

Linas, who always seems to have a grip on what is going on, strides confidently up to the ticket booth to get us on the next bus going to Nida. There is no one at the booth. There is no bus to Nida in the near future listed in the book outside the booth. I follow Linas out to the bus terminals and we scan the departure schedules posted out there, since we have learned that the bus schedule that is published may, or may not, have any bearing on reality. But this time it is true, there will be no bus to Nida for us.

Never fear, Linas has a plan. We will catch a taxi to the ferry and get a bus on the other side of the bay...the bus we would have taken from the station would have had to take the ferry and change on the other side anyway. Awesome. We grab a taxi, and arrive at the ferry just in time to get on.

Kaunas reminds me of Alaska, commercial sea port, cold water, no-nonsense people.

We get off the other side and just as we are about to get in a depressingly long line for the bus, we hear a taxi/van driver shouting that he has two more spaces. We take them. We end up sitting intimately close to one another in the front with the driver in about 1and 1/2 seats. still it is faster and less stifling than the bus would have been.

  

In Nida 

If Malibu had a history dating back to the 1400's it would be Nida.

We arrive a little after 1pm.  Linas heads straight for the place he had scouted out in advance for rooms. There aren't really hotels in Nida, just peoples houses with extra rooms. They all want to make as much money during the summer/beach season to compensate for the rest of the year when no one wants to stay in their house. So...the cost and the quality have a large gap.

The Houses of Nida

Sand Dunes Above Nida

The place we get is one room with two "beds" one is a cot-like structure and the other is a fold out couch. We don't really care, we toss our stuff down and hit the town.

First order of business is food, as it always is for me. We eat some over-priced but good food at one of the two restaurants in view, I purchase some sunglasses because in my rush i forgot one of the most important items to pack for the beach...among so many other things, I'm just glad I'm wearing pants at this point.

After food we hike up to the sand dunes that tower over Nida. There is a steep wooden staircase up the cliffs to the dunes, and the dunes themselves boarder on brush-land that had wooden walkways spider-webbed throughout. 

From the sand dunes we can see into Kaliningrad which is a sliver of coastline next to Lithuania that still belongs to Russia.


Mimosas on the beach

We head away from the lagoon that is the heart of Nida and over to the sandy Baltic-sea beach. This is my first time seeing the baltic sea. Walking down the sand we discover no amber treasures, but we do stumble across a beach volleyball tournament and a radio station booth blasting smooth jams. Just up the beach head and on top of a bluff is a lifeguard station, and a bar. Well i say bar. It was half bar, half liquor store.

It is at this point that I discover that Linas does not know what a mimosa is. So we top off our overtly homo-erotic romantic afternoon with mimosas on the beach. We buy an entire bottle of champagne and some orange juice and mix it ourselves in small plastic cups. We sit on the wooden deck overlooking the beach (and the volley-ball tournament) that is attached to the lifeguard tower and bar-thingy.

It is an entire bottle of champagne later and we are feeling more than a little fruity. It's time for more food.

In Vino In Nida

That night we head to In Vino, which is supposed to be a good place for an evening if you are not a 16-year-old-girl, but are also not a 60-year-old-man. It is.

The Characters

The first character of the night (for me) was Solus, he introduced himself by saying "You're American? I hate Americans"and promptly launched into a tirade about Obama (with the use of many colorful slurs that my white guilt will not allow me to repeat here), and our bloody war history. It was an interesting dichotomy of amusingly racists, and the accusation of war-mongering that usually comes from those far-left enough to be embarrassed by the use of racist terms. He did end the rant (</rant>) with the admission that he wasn't blaming me for all of the things wrong with my country. He was neat.

The girls in this group were what I would refer to as "party girls" although that might just be because they were all on vacation. However, the age difference between the men (Solus was the young one at 43) and the women was striking. My favorite (read most disturbing to me) pair was the 55something man and his overly-exuberant girlfriend who had come back from Italy where she had been living for the past few years for this trip, and seemed to have brought along with here an all-encompasing European arrogance...but she might have always been like that. At one point she remarked to someone, who was asking me if I like Nida so far, that "of course he likes it he is from Denver (note for the reader Denver-metro area pop = 3,110,436) that's the middle of nowhere and this is Nida!"  (Nida pop = 2,000, Lithuania pop = 3,339,550). I was confused because I thought, as an American, I was supposed to be the ignorant and arrogant person in the room, but she total won that contest.

We hung out until the place closed and then got dragged over to an after hours bar called "Faxe", it was dingy, small, cheap, and i felt completely at home. While the party girls danced with Linas I found some people more interesting to me (not that the others were not interesting, the shine had just begun to fade a bit at this point) out on the porch. It was a group of young-adults with low incomes and low self-esteem...so much so that one of the girls was letting her boyfriend try his hand at landing one of the party girls with Linas, downgrade if you ask me. They introduced themselves as cousins in case anyone was wondering if they were together, no one was listening except me, and i was not fooled for a second. I did pretend to be surprised when the girl, a little later, leaned into me and whispered that he wasn't really her cousin...blah, blah, blah.

It was from that group of people, however,  that i got the invite to go to a late-night club/bar in Vilnius called "play club" because of the big green "play" symbol over the door. I would have to investigate...but that is another story. It turns out everyone in Lithuania if living in Vilnius, but is actually from somewhere else. Everywhere we go we see the same people.

Boating With the Boss

We wake up Sunday, decide not to go meet our friends from last night for breakfast (in the cold light of day they are not as interesting in our memories as we seemed to think they were last night), and head down to the pier to have a boat ride. It is a warm enough day, and the mini-yacht, driven by the Verslo žinios owner Rolandas Barysas (part owner now that bonnier bought some of the company), offers us a new view of Nida. Puikus.

Rolandas regales us with tales of wild parties in Nida during his youth, and even wilder parties out on the water during the regattas during his middle age.  We eat some cured meats, and drink some beer before turning back to shore. We also sail as close as possible to the Russian border without being shot or arrested by men in black with night vision and speed boats...Rolandas enjoys very much telling us in detail what could happen if we crossed the imaginary line in the water. There is a Russian border here because after the breakup of the Soviet Union Russia held onto a lonely strip of coast here. The area is called "Kaliningrad" (Russian: Калинингра́д ).

Going "Home"

I pass out from lack of sleep again, which seems to be the best way to ride the bus. This time I wake up about halfway through to find that the seat next to me which was empty when i fell asleep is now occupied by a teenage girl who is engaged in very animated conversation with the teenage boy in the seat behind us. I don't understand their conversation but i don't need to speak the language to catch the familiar cadence of teenagers gossiping. Linas later confirms this when he tells me they kept him awake the whole time with their conversation about the guy's (perhaps) cheating girlfriend. Chicks, man.

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 11/20 Club + Tragedy

It's the weekend again, and we are going to see a punk show at 11/20.

Its just me and Linas, the girl from the last weekend isn't coming along...and i don't ask why.

The first band is from Poland and they have their rock faces on for sure. The girl who is singing is at times angered and amused either by her own lyrics or the crowd itself.

Either way she has some serious pipes.

Before the show even starts there is a guy who has already had too much to drink. he is pounding the front of the stage while the band is setting up. At one point he looses his control enough to grab the singer, and pick her up over his head in a bear hug-like grip. She pushes his face back trying to get loose. "No means no!" she shouts. It works. Later the guy is dragged out by the volunteer security for this homegrown venue. He does manage to get back in and is forcibly removed several more times. 

After this little melodrama the singer starts the show by telling us "as a little girl we were taught to be pleasant, to be [acquiescent], but that's bullshit."

...Let the punk rock begin.

Tragedy is from Oregon, they are brutal. The crowd packs in even tighter than before now that its time for the headliner. The band rips through song after song without stopping to talk, breath, or even drink that much.

The crowd eats it up. The place explodes into mosh pits, and crowd surfing. I thought you needed hundreds of people to crowd surf with any real effectiveness. I was wrong.

You can see all the show's photos here (http://photo.qip.ru/users/gooyuyu/96587837/all/?mode=large)

Linas tells me you can see me holding up one of the crowd surfers in one of the photos, I haven't found it yet. Where's waldo? 

The Wingman + Discovering Punk in Vilnius

We arrived back in the city for the end of street music day/the beginning of street music night. The official end is supposed to be around 10 pm. but you could tell the crowds and the musicians had no  intention of stopping.

Wandering

We wandered the street for a while, finding DJs cranking dance music inside ancient walled gardens, and people spilling into the streets from every conceivable corner. Fire dancers entertaining for change on the roads punctuated the deepening night with bright light and heat.  

SMC Again

We find ourselves back at the SMC, I need some whiskey.

The Girl

"Can you order the drinks? I need to talk to this girl." As statements of romantic intent go, this didn't even come close. I just nodded my head yes—since I couldn't really think of anything helpful to say.  It is much harder to execute one's duties as a wing-man if you don't speak the language. Linas left me at the bar to get the drinks, I appreciated this confidence in my new-found language skills—however misplaced, and made his way outside.

The Discovery of a Secret Punk Rocker

I meet them outside with the drinks. They are deep in conversation, and i don't understand any of it. I keep my distance, trying to be a good wing-man (I guess, I mean at this point I don't know enough to even be sure that is what role I am playing here). I wander off a distance, to give them some space, and find some people speaking English that i can talk to. They are not that interesting. Boo-hoo for me.

Linas waves me over. "Stand like you're [in our group]". I allow myself to join them, but remain certain that this is a violation of bro-code. They start talking in English for my sake. I am introduced to Gaile. Hi Gaile! I bring up music since it is still going on all around us, asking everyone what their favorite music is—and what bands they are into...blah, blah, blah. The same questions we all ask when we don't know the people and have nothing good to say anyway.

She knows punk..a lot of punk.

We disintegrate into quizzing each other about punk bands. "Do you know Bad Brains?" "Hell yes!". I know a lot of current bands from American that she does not, she knows a lot of bands from everywhere else that I do not. We have common ground on the classics.

11/20

"Where can i see local punk shows" I ask her. She tells us about an underground venue, no advertising, no listing, that has one every weekend and sometimes during the week.

It is called 11/20, because someone, somewhere, said that was the day punk music died. I don't know what year, I don't know who said it, and I don't care.

Lies about the Toasters

"The toasters will be there on Wednesday!" Gaile says "The fucking Toasters!" I exclaim, then break into a horrible rendition of Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down. I extract a promise from everyone that we will go. They agree.

The next day Linas tells me, the toasters are not coming.

Bullshit Gaile. Bullshit.

The Barbeque + Mariposa

Sometimes waking up is hard to do.

It is street music day, but we are headed out of the city for a BBQ in the country and some much needed recovery time. Linas has invited me to come to his friends house in the countryside. All of the people going are connected (either through spouse or friend) to the group of people he was in college with. They are all in media in one shape or form today.

We meet up at the SMC, it is halfway between our two places and is pretty much the only landmark i can get to with any reliability at this point.

Linas takes me to get food and drinks to take with us to the cookout, we are going to "Maxima" (read Lithuanian Walmart) and there two of his friends will meet us and give us a ride with them.

Maxima

 Food Shopping

This is the first real attempt i have made to buy food that isn't already prepared here. I follow Linas like a lost puppy watching everything he is picking up and asking questions about what everything is. I figure if i can learn brands (like the advanced consumer American I am) i can pretty much keep myself fed for a while.

We each get food enough for ourselves, and once we get there the food will all be pooled and everyone can share. I add a jar of pickles to my basket, it functions as my personal next-morning-recovery aid...I highly recommend (although it is most effective if you can not only eat the pickles themselves, but also chug down the pickling brine they are floating in, yum).

Now it is time for beer, and i could really use a bit of the hair of the dog at this point. The selection is broad, and, while it doesn't hold a candle to the micro-brew obsessed stores in Denver, it is more than enough to keep me questioning Linas about beer for quite some time. At this point his friends come walking up with their own purchases. We select some light beer suitable for a BBQ, and i add some single cans to try, and we are off to the check-out.

This is when i learn that bags have to be added to your purchase here, and you have to tell them before you are done checking out. And pantomime will only get you so far. Lucky for me i have 3 guides to help me through this simple transaction. I feel like a child again. It isn't as much fun as i remember it being...or maybe it is exactly as much fun as it was, and i just remember it wrong.

The Countryside

The house we arrive at is set back in the woods, along with several others. It is like a little subdivision of modern duplexes...each build out of the the identical wood, and the identical floor plan. What is it about people that even when we build houses "to get away from it all" we still cluster together, and match.

The little subdivision in the woods is very nice. And the people are even nicer. We are greeted at the gate by the family who is our host. The husband and wife, and their two little daughters. Maria, the older of the two girls, is obviously in change of everything...including the adults.

Eating...Everything

The food is delicious and plentiful. I am not sure of the rules for this type of thing here so i wait, and take my cue from Linas. He takes his time, talkignt o everyone, introducing me around. I am starving. After what seemed like an eternity, Linas finally picks up a plate and starts on the buffet table, there are chips, dips, and many little snacks to eat while the meats are being cooked. Our pile of food is added to the queue while the chicken and pork that was already there is cooking.

I dive into the food like I hadn't eaten in days. Everything is delicious.  The baby back ribs i brought out of a sense of truth and beauty turn out very well. I eat everything.

Se Habla Español

The family whose house we are at had just got back from nine months in Spain. The dad is a wind surfing instructor, and the wind was excellent on the Spanish coast. They all speak perfect English, and I am once again struggling to pick out a few words in Lithuanian and respond in kind. But as i try to absorb this new language more and more, an old one keeps intruding on my mind. All of the Spanish I thought I'd failed to learn comes rushing back at me.

The entire family, however, has just added Spanish (a little) to their list of languages, and the oldest daughter has decided her Spanish name (since there was some confusion on how to translate "Maria", an already Spanish name) is "Mariposa"—butterfly.

I seize onto this as a common language of communication. For the rest of the day I speak to her only in Spanish. It makes me feel a little better about not speaking Lithuanian. We have a linguistic bond.

The Woods

Neatly planted trees

After eating, and being deluged with a child's Spanish demands for attention. Linas, our host, and I go for a walk in the woods around the house. On one side there is a very old-growth forest, on the other, one that was planted 30 years ago. The man-mad growth is in perfect lines—there is something very unsettling about a neatly organized forest. There have been many changes in forest policy. Once it was considered good to clear brush away, keeping the forest clear of decomposing matter. Now it has become the rule to leave as much as possible to replenish the nutrients in the forest's earth.

As we come to the edge of the trees there is an open filed. Most of Lithuanaia is countryside, but not all of that is in use for farming. Much of it would be perfect soil for planting, but these days there just aren't enough people farming.

At the edge of the fields there are neat little piles of stones. These are collected by hand to keep the plows and other farm equipment from being damaged by them. The guys with me tell me they used to go as school kids to participate in this for the local farms, walking from one end of the filed to the other, keeping an eye out for stones and collecting them.

The rest of the day goes by quickly, and as the kids get more and more cranky, the adults start to filter out. Soon it is our turn to leave as well. I'm glad I woke up for that.

The SMC + Linas

Shumutza...but we'll come back to that. (disclaimer: spelling is only for entertainment purposes)

Linas Kmieliauskas, Cheif web editor for vz.lt (Verslo žinios online)

Linas is a very unassuming person in the office, but I am about to find out that there is a different Linas.

 The first time we meet Linas comes into the office I am working in with Arunas to chat, it comes up that he lives very near my apartment in the old town of Vilnius...so he offers to walk with me home and show me (maybe) a better route than the one i have.

 As we walk we talk. A plan is made, Linas will show me around the nightlife (read bars) of the city.
The First Bar Crawl

The first stop of the night is a small pub just down the road from my place. It is dim, with a low ceiling and few patrons, all hunched together in their own private conversations. We have one beer hear, still having awkward conversations that tell us nothing about one another.

The next bar is very different.

This is more my kind of place. The music is loud. The bar is packed, and everyone is around the same age as me. The walls are decorated it early-punk-douchebag, and you have to exit into the mini-mall behind the place to use the bathroom.

We start drinking seriously now. The conversation turn into the all-familiar drunken exposé of our life stories to one another.

The "What The Fuck 42 Club"

Some guys come over to our table and Linas greets them. They both speak English very well so when we are introduced i am on easy footing talking to them. One of the guys speaks with a heavy British accent, and it turns out that he went to school there for a while, his sentences get more and more punctuated with "bloody" as we consume more and more beer.

Outside smoking a cigarette the British-accented one turns to me and says "do you know what 42 is?"
I almost can't believe what I'm hearing and before they can begin to follow up on that question I have launched into a rant on the topic of Life, The Universe, and Everything...to which we all know the answer is 42, but what is the question?

It turns out that these guys and Linas have a newly formed Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy club named "What the Fuck 42". Although I can consider them no more than mere neophytes in the game (since their experience of the tale is limited to the new movie) we have an instant bond.

...And the drinking ramps up from there, of course.

The SMC

Sometime around 2 am. Linas and i separate from the pack of 42-ers and he takes me to his favorite, and traditional night-ending spot. The contemporary art center. I know. But it has a fantastic bar-by-night, cafe-by-day, attached to it. So the "Šiuolaikinio meno centras" (contemporary art center), or "SMC" (read shumutza!) welcomes us in, and offers us whiskey. Ah, it feels like home.

Not-latkes

Potato Pancakes at 4 am.

Good thing around the corner is a resturaunt that stays open well past 6 am. because when we get the boot from the SMC at 4 am. I am starving...in that immediate drunk-hunger kind of way. God I love Lithuanian food!


FIN.