Days 28-29 - Intense weekend activities

It was a pretty busy weekend on terms of relaxing. It is now only 10:30pm on Sunday and I am not even sure I will stay awake long enough to finish it.

On Saturday morning we went to Vingis park. We initially thought to go to Moletai but the sky was overcast and the rain looked promising. But halfway there the sky cleared and it got pretty hot.

On the way we passed the makeshift memorial to Michael Jackson. You can hear people talk about him everywhere.

Cute engraving on the engagement lock on a bridge to Zverinas.

Near Vingis we walked into the Church of the Apparition of the Holy Mother of God (a hell of the name). It was empty safe for a single person standing in front of the main altar. But the mass was going on and priest's voice seemed to be coming from everywhere. Dan finally spotted him in front of the single parishioner. The acoustics in the place are something else. The church is beatifully restored inside and almost finished on the outside as well. The priest drives a brand new Mazda sedan. With the incredible turnout, I wonder where did he raise the funds to put all the work into the church. And in general, with the parishioners not required to give a portion of their income to church, fund-raising must be one of the key activities of the churches.

A formerly pretty house in Zverinas. Probably worth millions now. I am serious. The property values had fallen here but they are still at crazy levels where it is cheaper to buy an apartment in a middle of Paris than one in the center of Vilnius. It is all probably going to stop once they introduce property taxes and make people pay to support all the historical and otherwise properties that they had appropriated and are just sitting on top of.

The park was very nice. The wild strawberries are so plentiful that it is like a weed. Georgia went on a few rides she was not ready for last time. Dan and I were watching with great fear her going up and down in a rickety white swan, while smiling and waving.

Then we walked back home planning to go to get a vacuum cleaner for Alicia and some Russian books for Georgia. On the way we passed many weddings and a bachelor party where the groom to be was carrying a fully inflated rubber boat and a tip jar. There were also two girls sitting in the pizza place next door, all dressed up and looking miserable about it, do not know why.

We were very impressed by the book store near Alicia. They have lots of training materials for school. We got magnetic Russian alphabet and this book. Very happy about the book, though don't care of the manual at the end. We will definitely be back. Can take orders. On a later note, we opened up the magnetic alphabet, 10th Kingdom brand, and the magnets were separate from the letters. The whole family sat together for 30 minutes and put them together. In the end 5-6 magnets were missing. But I guess it was a good little family project.

Dan set up the vaccuum cleaner and proved that there is more than meets the eye inside the carpet. Incidentally the huge variety of choices as far as vaccuum cleaners are concerned is very cool to see but with the market of this size is not sustainable. There were four double shelf rows with not a single one repeating. Reminded us of the Hyper Maxima when it used to really be Hyper.

Then we went home and waited for Vitalik and his family. Treated them to the fourth version of the cold borsht. Apparently to take it to the next level you have to use the beets marinated in the apple juice instead of simply being boiled. I will never master the art.

We had a really good time. In the evening we walked outside and went to the youth park for the little ones to catch some more fresh air. It was warm but there was a pleasant cool breeze. There were lots of people out at 10pm. Dina said almost felt like a resort town.

The next day we had a BBQ planned at Lazutkas dacha. Off we went at 10 am and came back at 8:30pm. The dacha is located in an awesome spot on the cul de sac next to the lake. The house is solidly constructed and has a several fire places, 2 decks, and a pool with a sauna in the basement. Unfortunately because the family did not figure out internally who is responsible for the place pretty much no one is taking care of it and it is slowly falling apart. As of now they don't have running water because a pipe burst in the basement. Makes going to the basement bathroom really fun. Also, some vandals visited the place while they were away during the week and burned through some furniture on the bottom deck. And they too have a dead bird in the back.

Georgia enjoyed hanging out with the load of kids who were there, while we were with the adults. There was many of them. We also tried out the water of the lake. The ice had melted but it is still not a swimmable place for the spoiled NJ folk. Georgia did get in up to her waist.

In the middle of the day it started pouring like mad and we ran inside. They moved all the stuff onto the covered lower deck and with occasional power failures it was really cozy and pleasant being there. After the rain the air got very fresh and we walked around dashas sampling the ripening berries: cherries, wild strawberries, and currants.