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.