| | Finally, the days are getting longer. The equinox is upon us, and we're getting 12 hours of sunlight. The clouds even part in the morning, and I get lots of bright light in my room starting at 6:30. Which is when I grab my eyemask and roll over to go back to sleep. Europe turns its clocks forward one hour the week after Easter, so until then, it's a wake-up call at 6:30 for me. But at the end of the month we'll have light until nearly 8pm, which means we're that much closer to summer, outdoor cafes, and swimming in the lake. Of course, as I write this, I'm looking at a meager accumulation of snow on the red-tiled roof of my building. Most of it's melting (I knew I should have grabbed my camera last night to get some proof), but it snowed until about noon today. Yesterday was sunny, but punctuated with bursts of heavy snow and hail. I had a feeling that the mild winter wouldn't leave us early or easily this year, and so far that's been true. Last week we had weather in the 40s, and now we're getting back into the 20s overnight. Spring is just taunting us.
There are still lots of lovely traditions for this time of year though. The first weekend in March was Kaziuko Muge, or the St. Kazimieras Fair. Mostly people sell handicrafts and Easter trinkets: Palm Sunday flowers, painted eggs, candy sticks and baked goods shaped like bunnies. There were also stands selling food: sausage, peas, fried bread, and hot beer and wine. It was rather cold and rainy that weekend, and the warm beer was surprisingly nice. I still prefer hot wine.
The next week was Russian "mardi gras"/"shrovetide". I made yeasty pancakes for some friends, trying to follow the recipe we use at Princeton. They didn't turn out quite the same (very stiff batter), but the pancakes with thick and filling. I've really been on a pancake kick for a while, making crepes at all hours of the day. Now that I have a collection of leftover jams in my fridge, it's nice to have some pancakes or batter at hand. I just don't have that much of a sweet tooth, and find myself craving pickled herring and green onion instead of strawberries and powdered sugar. Or smoked salmon and cream. Or caviar. Great, now I'm hungry.
More about food... The Fulbright girls were all invited to a dinner at Ambassador Cloud's house in early March as well. Ada and I got somewhat short notice of this, and it kind of felt like our invitation was an afterthought. The ambassador's cook makes really good Tex-Mex food, so it was a real treat. The cornbread muffins were absolutely amazing, and made me realize how much I miss corn products. Sure, you can get canned corn, which is delicious, but there's something about cornbread and -muffins. And corn tortillas. You can't even get cornstarch -- they use potato starch here. (Big surprise.) In the end, it's kind of nice to have such simple foods be a treat. Like beef. I don't eat much meat, here or in the states, but here it's always pork or chicken. Pork is by far the cheapest, usually half the price of beef dishes in restaurants. But when I get the chance, it's nice to order a lovely piece of red meat. Needless to say, I had seconds of the beef fajitas at the Clouds'. Dessert was an amazing coconut flan. I couldn't stop eating it, even though I'd already had too much. Yum.
I had a chance to take a quick trip to Klaipeda with a friend there on business, so I skipped a day of class and spent the afternoon wandering around Old Town. It's a very, very small city, but it has a really interesting history. It was the only place in Lithuania that was really part of the Hanseatic League, and there's still a Germanic feel in the city. It reminded me of Latvia in some ways. Check out the pictures. It was really empty in the city, since it's much more of a summer place. There's a lagoon off the coast, beyond which is a small sliver of land known as the Curonian Spit (called Neringa in Lithuanian). You can take a ferry from Klaipeda to Neringa, where there are supposedly lovely sand dunes, secluded beaches, and probably lots of tourists in the summer. There's also a marine life museum/zoo, featuring dolphins and penguins. It's on my list of things to see next time I'm there.
The nightlife in Klaipeda was also on the small side. I had a copy of In Your Pocket as a guide, but it's only put out once a year and as such is outdated a bit. We couldn't find the middle eastern restaurant we wanted, but we did like the wine bar near the river, especially the gi-normous cheese platter. Dinner was at the "American" restaurant Skandalas (=scandal). The only scandal was the awful band that started playing halfway through our meal. We were seated way too close to the stage, which is exactly what happened when I went to Palanga in July. The food was pretty good, and the service was really amazing. There was a little promotion going on for the dark beer by Svyturis, the biggest and oldest (?) Lithuanian brewery. There should be more free sampling of this sort here! On the way back to Vilnius we stopped in Kaunas to go to the KFC and Pizza Hut in the local mall. It was worth stopping to get some of that original recipe goodness and a pizza with a decent-sized crust. But we got severely lost on the way back to Vilnius, and ended up taking a major detour.
March 11 marks Lithuania's independence from the Soviet Union. It gets kind of confusing, since February 16 marks Lithuania's independence from...Russia? Some other empire? Anyways, there are a lot of independence days in the beginning of the year. Since the 11th was on a Tuesday this year, we had two days off from class. It just so happened that over the long weekend that my friend got his shipping orders. He's one of the Marines that guards the embassy, and his tour was up here. A group of us got together to make sure we sent him off in style, visiting all our favorite places one last time. We went out for dinner on his last night at a cute little French restaurant (I got steak frites, it being a special occasion), and I think we drove the waitress crazy.
So Alex is gone now, and he didn't get to go to the basketball game with us on Saturday. (Some of my other friends had a big fight, so we almost canceled the whole thing.) We got tickets to see Lietuvos Rytas (Vilnius) play Zalgiris (Kaunas) for the last time this season. It's a huge rivalry, since the cities are only 100 km apart. I'm friends with a couple of the Vilnius players, so it was fun to see them actually in action. The arena is kind of small, but it was packed. The best part was that concession prices were not jacked up the way they are in the States: a beer and a hot dog for only $4! It was a really exciting game and Vilnius ended up winning by 9 points.
Now we have a week off from class for Easter, so I'm using the time to catch up on my writing. A friend from the UK is in town visiting before he goes up to Riga for Latvian language classes. Coming up for me is a trip to Krakow (mmm, Polish food!) and visits from Nick and my future NYC roommates. Now I'm off to my knitting circle, hoping to finish off my sweater. And I thought it was already too warm for sweaters. (Did I mention it's still snowing here!?!)
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| | Posted 3/19/2008 12:33 PM - 37 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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