Day 60 – Walking with Isolde

Finally figured out why most of the intersections are dug up – the city is installing the new traffic lights. Usually they have both sets up before taking off the old lights but today they took off the old lights before putting in the new ones on a busy intersection near the kindergarten. Without a traffic cop it made crossing a really special experience. I felt pretty comfortable though because not that many would want to hit a stroller with a kid in it.

Isolde came over for lunch today and we went to Sue’s Indian Raja restaurant. It was such a great experience last time, we were looking forward to today. It was also Isolde’s first trip to the Indian restaurant.

Unfortunately the chef must be away on vacation or something. The food looked Indian but no longer tasted as such. The rice and nan were dry, all the meats were characterless and not even spicy. It was disappointing. But at least Isolde liked it - and most especially mango lassi.

After we put Georgia to sleep, Isolde and I walked around the nearby galleries, visited a few boutiques. 350LT for a t-shirt with a sign "Slow Women Crossing", darn, anyone? We also went inside abandoned house. It was really great. Most of the first floor is broken up down to the brick. But there is one apartment – with apparently nice looking door (very similar to ours). To get there you have to step over some shaky boards that were placed to block the hole to the basement. There is a beautiful flower store in the same building. It has metal mesh floor allowing to see the old basement underneath.

Isolde commented that there is not such thing as unified dress style in Vilnius. People are a lot more relaxed about how they appear and you see all sorts of styles and colors. It is not like that in Kaunas and Yekaterinburg. There one tries to fulfill the “standard fashionable” wardrobe requirements and then if funds allow move on to the higher level brands. A large population of local and visiting Goths adds to the color of Vilnius. Many have interesting piercings (like one straight in the middle of the cheek), tattoos, wildly colored hair and clothing designs. There is one element of clothing that seems prevalent on most women – scarves. I’ve been getting hungry for one looking at all the varieties of colors and textures.

For dinner we went to Alicia. She and Natasha made an awesome meal and we had a really good time.

Natasha and Andrei told us about their trip to Svintoe. Due to the bad weather there was much less people than usual. Just a week ago, in nice weather you used to have to use the stroller as a crowd-breaker to get through. They were not able to stay at their usual guest house because the owner was staying there and she hates dogs. So the guest house manager got them a room at the hotel that caters to dog owners. They liked it and decided to stay even after the owner left. There is a new law whereby dogs cannot swim in the sea. It is OK to frolic in the protected dunes among the broken glass and plastic bottles. Just no swimming. They were pretty upset about it having almost been fined twice. It is pretty inhuman and I hope it will change – as soon as someone with authority decides to take their pet swimming.

Georgia says funny things sometimes. The other time she said “Mommy, go away.” I said “That’s not a nice thing to say, and I never say that to you.” So she thought about it and provided improved “Mommy, go away, please.” It is interesting to see her learn conjugations in Russian. She has the regular verb conjugations right, but for irregular she sometimes makes mistakes. If you correct her, she uses it right moving forward. It is almost like the correct way sounds right to her.