This is what happens when the monkeys in my head get tired of sitting at their typewriters, and start throwing poop at each other instead.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Capering in Klaipėda (LT update 9)
This past weekend, I once again left Vilnius to go explore other parts of Lithuania. This time, I went to Klaipėda, a port city on the Baltic Sea. Two of my oldest friends are part of a family of Lithuanian-Americans who grew up in my hometown. The oldest brother in that family now lives and works in Klaipeda as the head of the international department at the college there.
The bus ride there was a little over three hours, and exceedingly smelly thanks to our bus driver. After arrival, I met with Aras and his family (wife and little daughter). We cooked some dinner and after that went down to the Sea Festival. The initial description I got from Aras was really apt: it's like the Durham Fair, except with booze.
The first night, we wandered around until our prepared alcohol stock ran dry. The mixed drink we made was actually pretty awful. I suggested gin and ginger ale (my favorite to-go drink), but we didn't have ginger ale. Being smart, and having seen bartenders do it, I suggested that we mix some club soda, bitters, and lemon soda/juice. This turned out not to taste at all like ginger ale, and after adding the gin and some blue curacao, the drink was thoroughly awful. I mean, we both still drank it all, but it was un-good. After the blue shit dried up, we ended up at a cafe to get beers and food.
First we ordered some kepta duona (fried bread -- typical Lithuanian beer food) and then I finally tried deep-fried koldunai. Koldunai are like tortellini, or pel'meni if you're more Russia-inclined. Deep fried they are honestly not so good. I really expected better, but what can you do. Maybe this place sucked, I don't know. After fortuitously catching a microbus, we went on home and played cards before turning in for the night.
The next day, we all went across the lagoon to the Curonian Spit. There, we biked from the ferry port over to the "Hill of Witches," which is a gallery of local-mythology-themed wooden carvings. The bike ride was a lot longer than I expected, and for whatever reason my back started giving me all kinds of trouble. Needless to say, when we finally got there, my body was very happy.
We got home and started on dinner. Previously, before heading out for the ferry, we had gone to the market and picked up some various things. There were super-cheap overripe bananas at the market, so we made those into banana bread. There were leftover meatballs from some earlier meal, so we made meatball subs. After that, we packed up some rum and Coke and set out for the Sea Festival again. More wandering around and then once the rum and Coke was gone, we went to get beers and food.
The waitress told us that they weren't serving food any more. That was annoying, so we just ordered beers -- what are you gonna do... BUT then, I went in to use the can, and I saw them shoveling huge amounts of pizzas in and out of their ovens. "No more food," my ass... This prompted a swift decision to execute the drink-and-dash, and it was so ordered. With so many people around, the restaurant people would have been very lucky indeed to have caught us or even noticed that we made off with some beers.
We returned home around 4:30, since we got a late start. Cooking the meatball subs and banana bread had taken longer than expected, so we didn't actually get to the festival until late. Upon arrival home, it was just starting to get light again. Drunk cooking ensued, and we killed the supply of ground beef that was supposed to be burgers for Sunday's lunch.
The next morning, we went back to the festival, which was winding down, to get a present for my dad. After that, it was off to the bus station and the ride back to Vilnius. The bus was filled with all dudes. They were speaking a weird Russian/Lithuanian mix and being rather raucous. The driver seemed to relish this, and since it was a high-end microbus (with a DVD player and whatnot), he put in a Russian movie called "Никто не знает про секс," or "No one knows anything about sex." It wasn't porn, it was just, like, a dude movie (ex., Grandma's Boy, American Pie, something like that). It was a genuine Russian Sausage Party, complete with beer bottles clinking around in the back of the bus and the boner movie showing on the DVD. Honestly, I was so tired that I just slept about 2/3 of the way, so aside from the general absurdity of the situation, I can't really comment.
Anyways, I made it safely back to Vilnius and slept soundly.
Oh, and one thing we did both nights was "Where's Waldo?" Every time you see a person wearing a horizontally-striped, red and white shirt, you yell out "Waldo!" and then whoever has fewer Waldos at the end of the night has to buy the difference, in beers, for the winner. Even now, when I'm walking around Vilnius, I find myself immediately recognizing people in such shirts and mentally yelling "Waldo!" You might not think that design is too popular, but we were into double-digits both nights. I believe each time, the score was around 12's or 13's.
Ultimate is alive and (fairly) well in Lithuania (LT update 8)
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had the awesome opportunity to attend some intense weekend practices with Artūras and his team last weekend. I've always said that observing the subtle differences between teams is fascinating (even between IU and g-dub), so you can imagine how interesting it was for me to attend an entire weekend's worth of practice with a non-American team.
The team is called Taskas ("point," like точка in Russian) and they play in a sleepy little town called Zarasai. It's really weird to see a team crop up in such a small place (8 000 people in the town, I was told). Anyhow, wouldn't you know it, they're the best team in the Baltics and they can beat a lot of Russian teams, too. I was definitely excited when one of their main players, who played here in Vilnius, asked me to come up with him and teach them some things about things.
I was glad to find out that I didn't really have to start from scratch. They were already playing a ho-stack, which, as I told them, is excellent (granted, at first it looked like a complete shitshow). They are no stranger to zone defense, and they already have a system. Furthermore, their throws were completely acceptable, so no one had to waste any time teaching people how to throw. That's not to say they're perfect, I mean, a lot of them travel pretty frequently, but I'll trust other teams to tell them about that...
I left Vilnius on Friday and after a two-hour drive through the countryside, we were there. After getting settled with my host, some more folks showed up with some good spirit and the night had begun. A lot of them spoke English, and one had even been to America (albeit to Cleveland -- blech). After the first round of people left, another round showed up. Mind you, first I had been drinking a beer or two. Once I was done with those, I figured that the axiom about "beer before liquor never been sicker," didn't apply to having two beers, and then drank a shitload of liquor. I still maintain that two beers doesn't count for that particular rule. But about .4L of starka later, the second round of people showed up with... wine. Jesus Christ.
I don't like wine. Really, it's bad, and I would never drink it by choice. But I didn't want to be impolite so I said, oh, great, thanks for this wine -- all the while thinking yeah, this is trouble. So I drank my glass slowly when all of a sudden the girl next to me dumps a full glass of wine into my cup. Fuck! Needless to say, I don't entirely remember going to bed that night, but I was in a contained space and imbued with the fear of being in a strange place, so I didn't do or say anything retarded.
The next morning was rough. It was made rougher by knowing that we were going to have a two-a-day practice. I chugged a lot of water and some yogurt (sans nasty yogurt fruit thank god!!) and pretty soon it was time for a nice nauseous ride off to the field.
We arrived at the field. It was not great. I will post pictures eventually but let's just say this... Imagine everything that could be wrong with a field. This field had it, albeit in patches. Tall grass? Yeah. No grass? Yeah, that too. Craploads of rocks? Uh huh. Holes? Boy howdy. Bees? You better believe there were bees. Fucking bees. Even so, I wouldn't let myself be deterred by a shitty field (after all, I've played on Woodlawn), and neither would these guys.
As stated earlier, I did NOT feel good getting out of the car on Saturday morning. Even so, I obeyed the mental mantra of "America. Fuck yeah." I sucked it up and pwnt some kl0wns. Cause I'm a fuckin American, and we do that shit right. Gotta represent the Stars & Stripes, and also IU and g-dub. Gotta show these Lithuanians that we're not a bunch of weenies when it comes to getting spirited (more on achieving this goal later).
I kind of just went with the flow for the first practice, while I got to know everyone and they go to know me. A few I had already met, because they're in Vilnius for the summer and play at my regular games. One of these guys is Zina, who finally realized that I speak Russian. He was like "Oh man, that's great, I can finally talk to you." He's a very good player, a cutter who can throw. He also listens when you tell him things to improve -- a highly valued characteristic in ANY country.
Between practices we went to every fucking cafe in town, but they were all closed or reserved (it's wedding season here). So, lunch ended up being Chicken Kievs bought from the grocery store. They were good, but they were like lead in my stomach when we went back for practice #2. Everyone in my little group who ate these things for lunch was like a corpse on the field for the first 20 minutes. Wayyy too heavy for before-practice food, but what can you do? Everything was closed.
During practice number two, we worked on some ho-stack stuff. Clearly, I know my things when it comes to ho-stack. Furthermore, having worked through a whole cadre of airheaded noobery at IU, I know how to teach it. So I started doing that. It was a bit of a struggle during this practice, but change doesn't come easily (or so I thought).
After practice, we went home, showered, ate some more Chicken Kievs, and then went back to the grocery store for some materials with which to get normal. By around 7 or 8, we were boozing once again. This was mostly a team affair, and it was a lot of fun. We partied probably until 4 in the morning. Several people who had driven decided to spend the night -- it was one of those nights. I didn't want to get shit-housed, so I was at least lucid the whole night, but other people definitely decided to get crunkapottamus. The best part about this marathon party (other than the good company obviously) was that no one was playing beer pong or quarters! No one even suggested it and everyone still had a good time. So eat it, asshats, it's possible and even enjoyable to have a party without fucking beer pong.
Over the course of the party, I asked those who had been abroad if they knew what "shotgunning" was. They didn't. So I taught them some things. The thing is, cans here are 0.5L (a lot more than American cans) and the beer is all over 5% alcohol. Moral of the story: shotgunning gets you a bit toasty in Lithuania...
Anyhow, the next morning, everyone was in slow motion. I was a little parched, but other than that I was ready to rip. Practice got off to a slow start, but heated up very quickly (literally and figuratively). For Sunday's practice, I really tried to introduce some American concepts to them -- like getting the disc to a middle handler every time from the pull (while in the ho-stack). Also, they just needed someone to tell them how to cut (check-mark style) and it made an immediate difference. Especially with Zina, the guy I talked to earlier. I saw him at yesterday's scrimmage and he was torching some of the other local guys just by doing what we in America would call a standard cut.
It's weird, they have good fundamentals, but there are some critical things that I think no one ever told them. The check-mark cut is one thing. Also, stepping off the line on the pull so you can get a running start. Another thing was keeping their feet under them on the mark (not being too wide) and being on their toes. Artūras especially liked that one, and did a good job of applying it. That's the thing -- I was very surprised at how quickly they picked up a lot of the basic concepts I tried to show them. Literally, it took two practices to make things about 1000 times smoother than they had been before.
After Sunday's practice, we took a (very tired) ride back to Vilnius and that was all. So now I'm going to point out some things I noticed while I was playing with these guys (and about Lithuanian ultimate in general).
The tradition of nicknaming is carried on well here. The leader of the team and my host was Kaban -- boar. One of the handlers was Bazas -- Buzz, plus the Lithuanian masculine ending "as" that they put on all names. He was given that nickname after his dad saw an American movie and named him after a character (I bet it was Toy Story -- had to be). I spell it "Bazas" because Lithuanians don't pronounce the "u" sound the same as we do. Another guy was Pochka, which in Russian means kidney but I'm not sure that's why he has that name. Oh, and incidentally, this kid is the only person I've met who is skinnier than SuperGrover. I'm not sure I have a picture of him, but man he was a stick. A guy who wasn't there, his name was Pypka, because of the Russian word рурка, which means "butt." In Russian it's pronounced "ROOR-ka," but since Lithuanian doesn't use Cyrillic script and all the letters look like Latin script, they call him Pypka (PEEP-ka).
Some final comments before this gets inordinately long. Lithuanians, and Europeans in general I think, don't play as physically. There's not as much bumping and running as I'm used to, having played handler in the Midwestcoast offense. Another thing is that they play outdoors like they play indoors. The outdoor season is very short here because of the climate, whereas the indoor season is quite long. Indoors you can throw a lot of hammers and over-the-top stuff and get away with it. Outdoors, they try the same thing, and I think it gets them into trouble. Furthermore, they don't like to foul. If I called foul, they'd apologize profusely and then offer to slap hands. Very polite, sure, but that's weird to me. If it's a foul, meh, no need to apologize, it just happens. I guess one could say they have superior spirit, or one could also say that I'm just a jackass. Either way, I'd like to see them get more aggressive, especially on the mark.
Lithuanian people also don't do well without a system. Even with drills, you have to tell them every little thing or else there's a huge hubbub about what the fuck is going on. And finally, they love to yell at each other (especially certain friends of mine who shall remain nameless -- haha). It's like having a whole team of Tim Naylors. Don't get me wrong, Tim's the man (no, you're the man, Tim), and his yelling helped me a lot, but when everyone argues all the way back to the line, it's no good.
A great weekend, all things considered. Furthering the cause of international ultimate? Check. Getting spirited with friends? Check. Exploring another area of the country? Check. Getting to know people better? Check. Muy bueno. OK that's it. Two more weeks to go! This weekend's entertainment: the Klaipeda Sea Festival. If I think of anything to write between now and then, I will. But for now, I miss everyone, and I hope to talk soon!
Meet the new boss -- not the same as the old boss (LT update 7)
My old boss, certified clown, has left. His replacement is awesome, and has given me more work in the past week than in the previous five. I know that I still owe a lot of you responses to various birthday-related well-wishes (thanks, all), but honestly I have just had very little time lately.
That isn't to say all of the new work has been super-exciting. I did, in fact, shred a poopload of old papers (some from the days even before my prior boss). When the job was done, I had spent about 10 hours or so standing at the industrial-size shredder, and filled about six barrel-size garbage bags with shredded documents. The other stuff has been more meaningful and deals with site security and inventorying of stuff in the secure storage area.
The new boss was in a very "hot" place before coming here, so while it's nice for her to get a break here, there are a lot of things that got neglected by my old boss. Being someone who was at very active posts, as you might expect, she wants things to be a bit more structured here. The list of things that need to get done is long, but she's got a whole lot going on -- still getting accustomed to her new post and duties, etc. Hence, more stuff gets delegated to me, thank god.
This weekend, I will be out of town. My friend Artūras plays on a team in a town two hours north from us. They want me to come up and go to one of their weekend practices to give them some pointers. It's a good opportunity to get out of the city (haven't even done that yet, sadly) for the weekend, and of course playing and furthering the cause of international ultimate is always a good thing. I get a free place to stay, and I've already met a few people on his team, so I kind of know some of them.
The town to which I'm going is Zarasai, up by the nuclear power plant and the Byelorussan border. Its coat-of-arms is pretty funny. The top is a deer turning into a fish and the bottom is a wavy sword. Fear the deerfish.
All right, all right... I'll admit I haven't gotten out and around to the historical areas of the city, but I do have a few pics to share of the July 4th Party at the Ambassador's house. It was an invite-only affair with lots of VIPs and free food. Check it out, captions are in comment form:
This weekend has been essentially a four-day weekend. This is actually harder to explain than you would think.
Friday was obviously July 4th. That's easy to explain. The Embassy had the day off, except for the huge event that we had at the Ambassador's house in the suburbs, where everybody and their brother was invited, so long as they had some red-white-and-blue in 'em.
Yesterday was Coronation Day, the day that the legendary King Mindaugas was crowned, ushering in an era of prosperity for Lithuania. Anyways, today's Lithuanians don't consider it a holiday unless they get to miss work, so today is also a holiday. Apparently though, the way these things work around here is that if you miss a work day at during the regular week, you come in on Saturday. The Embassy doesn't really observe this policy, though, so they all just end up taking lots of days off.
Oh, and also, on Thursday night, the American Chamber of Commerce hosted an event with free food and whatnot. All Americans or American sympathizers in Lithuania were invited. For those of you who don't know, the American Chamber of Commerce promotes American investment in Lithuania. Thus, the sponsors included McDonalds, Kraft, Mars, Scotch-Brite, etc. All companies that already have investments here. Fucking Scotch-Brite had a dude in a sponge costume walking around. Given that I'm kind of laying off the booze after getting a little too spirited last weekend, I was upset that I wouldn't let myself be plastered enough to tackle the shit out of that mascot. As I may or may not have said on the blog already, it's one of my lifelong dreams to get in a fight with a mascot. Preferably the smelly piece of shit Philly Phanatic. Bravo, Tommy LaSorda, for body-slamming it into the turf. Also, kudos to you, Fernando Vina, you mediocre son of a bitch.
Let's also not forget the Expos' Youppi!, whatever the fuck that thing is supposed to be.
What the hell was I talking about?
Oh right.
Anyways, Thursday was pretty chill, I ate a lot of food and ended up staying almost until dark. Some Obama supporter was trying to convince me that if I were to vote purely on economics, I should vote for Obama. I was/am having none of that talk. He seemed to suffer from some pretty fallacious reasoning, thinking that the Iraq War was the only expense facing the United States. Also, he was all giddy about Obama raising taxes. Who the fuck wants raised taxes? And he forgot to mention that Obama wants to raise taxes just for rich people and big corporations. Furthermore, Obama wants to pay for everyone to go to college and create universal health care, both of which are hugely expensive in their own right. I could have slammed him with so many different hammers, shovels, and pickaxes of fallacy, but I declined. I'm not even in America right now, I don't want to talk about American politics.
Friday was the gala at the Ambassador's house. I was in charge of taking pictures, which I did for a while, but then bailed in favor of free food. Of course, the Marines started making fun of me for always being in the free food line. I can't blame them, really, since every time I walk into work, past the guard post, I have food with me. And let's face it, I'm a fat kid. More on that later.
Highlights of the July 4th event include getting pictures with not one, but two former presidents of Lithuania. This was my goal from the very moment I knew I was going to be working at this event. Actually, what I really wanted was a picture with the current president, but he was a last-minute scratch from the event. Anyways, I ran my idea past Niblet, an embassy employee with good contacts within the Lithuanian government. She agreed that we should totally get pictures taken with these guys. Eventually, she sought out a contact she had in the Presidential Office, who got us the "in" with Algirdas Brazauskas, who was sitting on the patio with some very ancient guy. He was more than happy to give us a picture. Incidentally, Brazauskas is built like a house -- not obese, but it looks in a Brazauskas-vs-trolleybus fight, I would give 7:1 odds in favor of the former president.
Next up was Landsbergis, who is a quite a small guy. This picture, which I will eventually post, is hilarious for two reasons. One, Niblet is quite tall (taller than I am) and so Landsbergis is standing there, bracketed by two people who are much taller than him. Two, he was eating an ice cream cone at the time. So here's this little old guy, giving the "who are these people?" look to the camera, holding a little pink ice cream cone. Simply hilarious. I should be able to post it at some point this week.
The rest of the party was fairly uneventful. I ate a little less than a dozen chocolate chip cookies.
Yesterday afternoon/evening was taken up by a get-together at the house of one of the Embassy employees. TheFulbrighter and Niblet were both in attendance, along with some other assorted Embassy folks. Judith, one of the residents there, prepared some most excellent burgers, and as such, I ate four of them in addition to a hot dog and three brownies. Nothing notable happened really, though it was a nice evening for all involved.
Moral of the story? I have absolutely no desire to eat breakfast today, and it looks like I'll have to stick to rice, pasta, and yogurt for the next week or so. Woof.
That's what I think of, every time I use public transportation. For the non-Simpsonically-inclined, the title of this post is a quote from Mr. Burns while he is using public transport for the first time after finding himself broke.
Anyways, some interesting experiences today. I got all the way out to Justiniškės (a suburb) to play ultimate. Having not played for two weeks because of cancellations, I would not be denied this time, and certainly not by simple geography.
I saw a dude wearing a Confederate flag belt-buckle. It was a non-sequiter because this dude was a prime candidate for the game "gay or European?" It's a great game.
Anyways, I guess I have the same complaint about when Americans wear the hammer and sickle, or CCCP. That, and when "rebellious" college students wear Che Guevara shirts. My thing is that you should always know what something means or stands for when you wear it. If you don't know shit about Che Guevara, than take his fucking face off of your torso! In the end, people can wear whatever the hell they want, but that won't stop me from calling them all dumbasses.
Another things I noticed on the bus. There were these two teenage Russian girls sitting across from me. You could have been completely deaf to their language and you still would have known they were Russian because they were dressed like small-town prostitutes.
The funny thing was when they got up to get off the bus. Remember that Lewis Black sketch, where he talks about that girl saying "If it weren't for my horse I wouldn't have spent that year in college?" Yeah, well, this was much less severe (and less funny I might add) but worth mentioning nonetheless. As the bus rolls to a stop at the bus-stop, one girl says, in Russian mind you, "Let's get going before everyone knows that we're Russian." Then, she proceeds to stumble on the stairs and do a near-faceplant onto the grimy Soviet-era bus-door.
Tomorrow, or some time in the future, I want to talk about the team that I play with. They're an interesting if underachieving bunch. More on that later.
