Day 52 - Goodbye to Israelis

Today was a somewhat uneventful day until the evening. We are making the plans to make the rest of the week more fun.

In the morning Dan and I went to our usual spot to work. Dan's mom took Georgia to the youth park where they stayed by the river. Then Alicia's crowd came in for lunch. They taught us how to make Okroshka soup. Here is the recipe from them: cut fresh dill, green onion, boiled potato, 1/2 boiled egg, several radishes, cucumber, bologna into small pieces/squares. Put it all in the bowl and add kvas (a mild fermented drink, I read that beer would work just as well). Add sour cream, mustard, salt and sugar to taste. It is very quick and healthy (as long as you don't use too much beer). Here are additional Russian and English recipes (it is not supposed to be that nasty looking) here and here. It is a nice alternative to cold borscht we've been having almost every day.

In the afternoon we went for a walk with Georgia - she walked almost all the way down Vilnius gatve and up to Cathedral square. On the way we saw 2 new varieties of Segway - there was one with rough terrain kind of tires and a kid one with a 4 year old boy riding it. A guy who looked like a professor was riding the rough one like a madman.

Dan's mom was meeting with her former co-workers in the afternoon. She called us at around 8:30 and asked for the keys to the apartment. We walked up to our street and saw that an accident has taken place near one of our backyard entrances. There was a police car with its lights flashing and a stopped car. A small crowd was gathering. We ran to get closer and saw that there was a 10 year old girl lying on the sidewalk surrounded by several adults including a policeman. She was screaming horribly but there was no external signs of damage. It is possible that a car hit her and either she was in shock or broke her legs or both. At least she was alive.

We met with Dan's mom and her friends and Dan went home and got a second set of keys and came back and emergency car still has not arrived. When we said good bye and started to walk away, at least 15 minutes after we came, the emergency car showed up. There are university emergency services nearby and a large hospital 10 minutes away and it was almost 9pm.

We were initially planning to sit down for some coffee but we stunned and just aimlessly walked around. Georgia heard the screaming and kept saying that the girl has to go to the hospital and the driver to prison. When we passed by our building again we saw the driver still stand there in the street with a cop next to him. I said it several times in my posts that many people have absolutely no respect for life when it comes to driving here. They drive the narrow winding streets like they are in a video game oblivious/neglestful of who may be standing at the end of the road.

On the positive side, we plan to resume our restaurant reviews tomorrow - embarrassingly we only covered about 30. We reserved the car to go to Kaunas on Saturday (followed by Olshevsky's dacha). On Sunday we plan to go to the water park outside the city.