1. The first random point is a song. Listening to it always brings a smile to my face. Inculto's "Welcome to Lithuania" was a potential Lithuania's entry in 2006 for Eurovision. In words and pictures it summarises everything about today's Lithuania. I needn't write more, feast your eyes and ears.
2. In a small town called Ukmerge, on the way to Riga from Vilnius, there is a small shopping centre with the name Eifelis. Next to the name there is a small representation of Eifel's tower and the outside walls are covered with a map of the Paris Metro system. Pourquoi?
3. On the north-eastern edge of Vilnius there is region which is almost entirely made up of student dorms and university campuses. It runs west to east along a street called Sauletekis - literally sunrise. Although the dorms are currently going (slowly) through large scale renovations, it used to be that those in the East were the worst to live in and had the furthest to walk to the bus and trolleybus stops, thus requiring a longer walk and a longer journey to central Vilnius. Certainly not a welcoming way to start a day of studies, especially in the winter. I don't know when, but for as long as anyone can remember, the dorms located on the west of the street have been called "New York", that glimmering, glass-towered bastion of hope, freedom and big bucks! On the eastern side the area is known as "Kamchatka", an area of distant, possibly desolate Russia that most people only know about from a Risk board.
Nowadays, Kamchatka isn't such a bad place to live - in the dorms that is, I've no idea about the area in Russia - and it's where most of the Erasmus and international students live.
4. "How's life in Vilnius?"
"I've got no hot water at the moment"
"Oh? Can't you just turn it on? What's wrong?" What, indeed, is wrong? Coming from a country where each person heats their own hot water for their morning showers and for their central heating this is a perfectly reasonable question. However, in most flats in Lithuania (and across the former Soviet Union I should probably add), hot water for both washing and heating is provided centrally so you can't ever, in theory, run out. Hooray!
However, my hot water has currently run dry as a result of a pipe problem somewhere in the hair salon below me and there has yet to be any agreement with the authorities who fix these things, when they can go and fix it - at least that's as much as I understand.
5. Vilnius has a bronze bust of Frank Zappa - apparently the only one in the world!
2 comments:
Hi. Regarding Niujorkas and Kamčiatka:
wehen you walk from Antakalnis to Saulėtekis those dorm "towers" stick up above the forest as if there was sort of New York beyond the trees, especially compared to generally flat area around (and Vilnius itself some 20 years back). Just a nickname.
Kamchatka is a huge peninsula , north of Japan. When you look at the map it's clear that it is more like an island, than a "mainland", though it is real peninsula, not the island. So, when you walk from Niujorkas or the university buildings towards Kamčiatka, you don't see the dorms itself (that one near the street had been built later), you walk knowing in theory, that there are the dorms, but they are hidden in the (sort of) peninsula in this situation: you reach the right path to the dorms (as if it was a "neck" of peninsula), go to the dorm itself - and here you are. The trees and feces of the homesteads around, it makes a feel as if the place is an "island" (sort of), though it is the peninsula ;). So it's another nickname. For americans it might be the nickname "Alaska" or something.
Wow. A logical nickname. Adam I'm sorry you don't have hot water, but you do crack me up. The land of the beautiful ladies? :)
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