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New Year, New Job, New adventures
This year has started pretty nicely, we have just returned from a lovely weekend away in our University town of Bath, meeting up with old friends, haunting old haunts. Organised by Laura, most of our old gang were there, it really was great to see people again.
We finally made the time to go to the Roman Baths, despite being free to visit for residents, we lived in Bath for three years and never went. I wasn't sure what to expect, I had seen the usual picture postcards but they always looked a bit photoshopped, an ancient bathhouse couldn't possibly look that well preserved.
Surprisingly, it looks just like the postcards. The tour starts by going through the interesting museum of Roman and Victorian items and excavation sites of parts of the baths and temple. Included in your £10.50 entrance fee is a rather excessive audio guide that should you listen to all the numbers may well take you all day! In addition to the standard commentary numbers there are narratives from 7 different actors portraying to be of different ages and social statures, Bill Bryson also has added extra notes and observations.
Luckily for our combined short museum attention spans, you can still gleam a lot of insightful information by forgetting the audio-guide entirely and reading the notices.
Entering the main bath area it really is like going back in time, green mineral-rich slowly smoking waters, limestone pillars and alcoves, statues of Romans atop the walls and a view of the Abbey peaking from outside. For effect it also helped the sky was a glorious blue. After your visit a free glass of the hot spring water is included (50p without a ticket) which other than being lukewarm and slightly odd tasting, is not all that bad.
I would definitely recommend a trip to the Roman baths early on a Sunday Morning as we did, I doubt it would have felt so magical with a surrounding tour group!
Currently, Simon and I are busily planing ourselves a trip to New Zealand for Kiwi Foo, Webstock and general adventuring, coming home via San Francisco, LA and South by South West in Texas, I am very excited about it!
In other news, yesterday was my first day working full time as a Senior Client-side Engineer for Clearleft. I was contracting here for the few months before Christmas, which meant I was familiar with the people and the working environment before this week, so it's not as scary as starting totally afresh :)
Clearleft are a great bunch, the projects are interesting and there is plenty of intelligent discussion and friendly debate. I am really enjoying being part of the team.
So in general, my hopes for this year are that it will be full of exciting new challenges, traveling and adventuring, making new friends, catching up with and getting to know current friends better. As for resolutions for 2008, I plan to spend more quality time with Simon, get fitter, perfect the poached egg and learn to bake a souffle.
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Berlin day 6 : Tours and Snow
Today started with glorious sunshine and then just as we ventured outside heavens opened, not for rain but for snow, huge chunks of thick snow.
It didn't put us off however, we were intent on going on the free walking tour I went on last I was in Berlin. Even if you know a lot about history both recent and early, it is still worth going on this tour. Both times I have been, the tour guides are like well rehearsed actors, enthralling and fascinating with new facts for the full 4 hours of tour.
The journey takes you through the Brandenburg gates, past the Jewish memorial and up to the location of Hitlars bunker (not over the peace bears like we expected, but instead under a carpark and a set of ugly flats). Going past the Nazi Luftwaffer buildings we learnt the 'colourful' history of the building also includes the Russian KGB headquarters and more recently the German Tax office
Once the tour was over, finishing up by the site of the old palace, our minds were swimming with new facts. The only thing left to do was to have them all drained out by the pub crawl organised by the same company.
The pub crawl was a lot of fun, we managed 4 of the 5 pubs before giving in. Berlin is full of some fantastic grunge punk bars, fancy cocktail bars and eclectic clubs, I only wish we had mode time to spend exploring them. It is an excuse to go back again.
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Berlin Day 5 : The Zoo!
Simon and I love going to zoos together when we travel, you may think that every zoo is the same and it isn't worth going to especially when you travel, you would be wrong :) Zoos are lots of fun and every zoo has a different variety of animals, some of which are rare to have in zoos (Such as Giant Pandas). Its a great day out and even when it it is wet and cold like it was today.
Berlin zoo is amazing, it has over 14,000 animals (1500 different species) spread across 35 hectares. During the war the zoo was very unfortunately bombed and only 91 of 3175 animals survived. Today they have increased the numbers and species dramatically and all the animals look happy and the environments are large, leafy and have ornate shelter buildings.
One of the many highlights we found is the nocturnal house, whereas in most zoos this means just bats and maybe the odd mouse; here they had a wide variety of strange looking animals, including a scruffy rabbit with a long tail and Jaguarundi (which are very small cat like creatures, they had 2 and a small baby one). We spent quite some time watching as they bounced and chased each other around the enclosure.
Knut is the current superstar of the zoo, we couldn't go to Berlin zoo and not see Knut. He is a baby polar bear born in the zoo, but his parents rejected him and his brother (who unfortunately didn't make it). He was the size of a small Guinna pig when the zoo keepers fished him out of the enclosure with a long fishing net. As an adorable white fluffy thing Germans became understandably enthralled, the reaction however was a little odd. Many videos of Knut playing and rolling and eating along with photos, were set to custom music and posted on youtube. For Example ...
Knut now is not so small and white or so fluffy. In fact he resembles a fully grown Polar Bear, even though he is under a year old!
Berlin zoo, from the amount of baby animals alone, definitely appears to be a breeding zoo. The pandas recently gave birth too, though apparently the sheer traffic of visitors coming to see Knut meant that the baby panda didn't survive, which is really tragic.
Pandas are really very sweet, they seamed happy enough despite the loss of their child, pictured here munching on the nutrition-less bamboo:
One of the things Simon nd I enjoy about zoos, aside laughing at Bantams and other amusing creatures—is doing impressions of the animals. This is Simon being a panda:
You can get a combination ticket when you go into the zoo in order to also go into the aquarium. It is not the same big aquarium with the lift inside a fish tank as advertised on various pamphlets in our hotel—though we didnt know that at the time.
It was still fun, there were lots of lizards, walking fish, and a very good selection of jellyfish, including baby jellyfish that you could see under magnifying glass! This green snake apparently, has the very original name of 'Green snake':
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Berlin Day 4 : Following the wall
As Simon had been otherwise engaged so far this week it was now time to show him round the bits of Berlin I had visited already this trip. Back to Potsdamer platz for more indulging of Glühwein, and this time a go on the snow-sledge! Then as the peace bears had been taken away we moved swiftly to the Reichstag (not up it this time) and the Brandenburg gate which today had been blocked up for the king of Saudi Arabia to visit the French embassy—we saw him briefly through the gate pillars.
Following the wall line back down through Potsdamer platz—the wall is still marked in brick on the road—we found the old Stasi buildings and statues which had been deliberately left un-restored as a reminder of events and a warning of consequences. For similar reasons a 200 meter stretch of the wall remains up as part of an outdoor museum display. There was a really interesting selection of billboard information near to Checkpoint Charlie with some old photos, including one of what the Brandenburg gate looked like in 1940, almost entirely unrecognizable today.
Dinner was in an Austrian restaurant with our happy band of seven, before a couple cocktails in a tiki bar with sand on the floor! much fun.
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Berlin Day 3 : Talking and eating
A comparatively short day,starting earlier than was pleasant considering the night before. Simon and I hurried to the conference center in order for him to give an enthusiastic talk about Javascript libraries.
After watching Mark Boultan give an interesting talk about typography 2.0, Jeremy Jessica and myself left Simon to finish an essay and we headed to KaDeWe food hall for much eating of interesting things, a nice coffee and stocking up on Christmas cookies and cheese.
Dinner that night was a smaller affair—13 interesting people. A great evening with fantastic French food and an amusing waiter was followed up by a couple pints in a typography themed pub called the Zwiebelfisch (meaning a mixture of typefaces)
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Berlin Day 2 : Touristing
A lazy morning was definitely appreciated this morning. Leaving Simon to work on an essay, Jessica and I headed into the centre of Berlin for a day of being tourists.
First stop was Potsdamer Platz, and while the area itself is full of banks, chain restaurants and cinemas, it's a good place to start any Berlin adventure. As ex-German residents (Jessica more so than I) we were delighted to find a mini Christmas market by the station! Winterwelt, it turns out, had a decent amount of Christmas and food related stalls, a real snow sledging track and of course the obligatory Glühwein. Mmmmm!
From there we visited the peace bear sculpture garden, which we reasoned might well be the location of "that bunker" which people occasionally look for in this area. The piece bears are really fun, each decorated by a representative of a different country with the skill and technique varying wildly. Artistically some of my favourites include the Thai bear, Spanish bear and the Cuban bear.
By contrast the Holocaust memorial, understandably, has a completely different feel. Large imposing grey blocks of varying heights, from above it looks like they are all the same height because it is not immediately visible how deep the ground within dips.
Once inside, the feeling is one of claustrophobia and suppression. It's really quite easy to feel lost even if you aren't. Jessica was telling me that the manufacturer (Degussa) of the graffiti resistant coating on the pillars caused some controversy being involved in the memorial because a subsidiary of which were the manufacturers of the lethal gasses (Zyklon B) used in the concentration camps.
The Reichstag area was our next destination. The buildings by the river are very majestic. If you are interested in such things the German laws are inscribed on a wall of glass nearby.
We were very fortunate as we passed by the front of the Reichstag building to find that the queue to get in to the domed roof was very short. Twenty minutes later we had been filtered like sheep through security and were in the spiral dome.
Quite amazing autumnal colours and a 360 degree view can be seen from the top, including this amazingly high glockenspiel - apparently the fourth highest in Europe, though I don't know where the other three are.
There is a café at the top—no really there is—the lunch buffet looked really fancy though we didn't stop. Heading from west to east through the amazing 18th century Brandenburg Gate we enjoyed a Dunkin' Donut in the beautiful piazza on the east side, which is only slightly marred by the hefty road-works but is still pretty.
Heading toward the pedestrian area of museum island, we bumped into an army and police brigade protecting a Luxembourg delegate, an interesting diversion
Our target was the Pergamon museum, well worth a visit! if only for the large roman sacrificial alter and amazing Babylonian glazed blue Ishtar gate
Later on, evening events took 15 hungry geeks to a restaurant nearby for a good meal and a happy end to an exhausting day!
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Berlin Day 1 : The journey
As with usual Day 1 of our holiday / conference trip primarily consisted of travelling to our destination. It had been an unusually frantic yet fun week the week before what with one thing and another, though we knew the transition to Berlin would be tricky for Simon what with talk, tutorial and various other deadlines, as dutiful girlfriend I was on hand with help and assistance. After two hours sleep in a faceless chain hotel but armed with Uncle Nuri's tasty Turkish canape's as breakfast, we set off for an early flight to Berlin.
We observed of the prettiest sights I have seen when flying, there were so many wind turbines on the flat plains approaching Berlin, the low fog was being interrupted and altered like ripples of rocks under a wave.
Arriving in the airport we picked up a fellow Web2expo-goer and headed forthwith in a taxi so Simon could finish his slides in a corner in the conference centre somewhere.
Our first crisis occurred when we couldn't find the entrance to get into the conference centre! Now this wouldn't have been an issue if we had come from the S-bahn, but having come from the road we could see the main entrance to indoors with the very fancy enormous web2expo signage but we couldn't get in. We bumped into a girl who had been all the way round one side and back to where we were, everywhere was shut and the guard wouldn't let us through the one entrance we did find! it might have been frustration, persuasion or an example of group-think but the four of us decided our only option was to jump the fence, fall down the 2 meter drop to the steep incline of the muddy shrubbery below.
Narrowly avoiding the guard who had told us to get lost, and fortunately away from the industrious gardeners nearby (having landed on it now appeared a freshly planted steep shrubbery) we were down. Running conspicuously and into the main entrance hall and leaving slightly muddy footprints, I can only imagine the impression we four must have given!
The nice web2expo people gave me a pass to watch Simon speak (for moral support, I had seen the same presentation at 2am that morning!) though misreading my passport my name is now 'Natalie Citizen Downe' apparently.
In the speakers lounge setting Simon up to make last minute touches to the slides; we discovered after some investigation that the power cords all around the room didn't actually plug into anywhere, nor did there appear to be any plugs in the room. Today was a day of workshops, the actual talks didn't start till the next day so construction of the venue was still going on.
Some searching led to the fire closet where there was one solitary plug. Some dangerous daisy-chaining later 4 power hungry geeks were satiated, if there was still no wifi there was at least some power now.
A little while later power was no longer enough - 5 of us went on a little wifi hunting mission which culminated in a small room behind the keynotes centre with cardboard boxes as a table, where a woman had a laptop plugged into ethernet. It looked promising ... though investigation proved the exceedingly long ethernet cable didn't actually provide internet. Never mind.
Slides done but too late for me to hunt a printing press for handouts - Simon commenced a very fine 3 hour tutorial
Talks done our happy band of fellows trudged back to the 'Hotel California' to change for dinner. We ended up having dinner in a lovely - 30 years back in time - traditional German restaurant, with fantastic foods if slightly odd coloured traditional Berlin beer!
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Settling into Brighton
It has been roughly a month now since Simon and I have moved to Brighton. Our lovely if tiny flat has been suitably warmed and we have happily settled into Brighton life now I think. I have recently been contracting 3 days a week for Clearleft and as well as working on some personal projects and tech reviewing a book I am currently looking for freelance projects in the local area.
There have been a healthy amount of events since we moved, both social and tech-related, Brighton is definitely a nucleus of exciting things to do and it is great fun. It has been a bit of a conference season too, what with the awesome dConstruct directly after we moved, the great (if slightly hungover) BarCamp Brighton, followed shortly after by an equally great FOWA Expo. It has been fun meeting new people and catching up with ones I know, both those who I am in regular contact with and people who I haven't seen for years!
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New York Day 1: snoozing, ferry and NY comedy
For some reason Simon and I felt incredibly rough today, we watched trashy chat shows and slept through most of the morning with headaches from hell. It could be jet lag, it could be not drinking enough water, it could probably be a tea withdrawal symptoms though! Eventually surfacing from the room we strolled up to Central Park via some very fine pizza on the Upper West Side. We snoozed in the 'sheep field' for nearly 2 hours before going to the Apple store to play with an iPhone, it is so lovely! we then took the (extremely hot) metro to the Stratten Island ferry port.
The Stratten Island ferry is free and well worth a trip, it goes past the statue of Liberty which you can see from the port side of the ferry. I think I must have a vivid imagination of large things, like giraffes, the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, I imagined all of them to be bigger than they are in real life, giraffes were a particular disappointment. The Statue of Liberty is still very impressive though! When you get to Stratten Island and arrive in 'New Brighton' you have to get off the ferry and walk through the ferry port in order to get back on to go back.
Back in Times square we investigated tickets to the musical murder mystery 'Curtains' staring Niles Craine! as it was sold out we are adding it to our itinerary for Monday, it looks really fun! Our evening entertainment for tonight instead consisted of one of the only good Mexican restaurants in New York apparently, and then the Laugh Factory which was funny in places but generally quite offensive. I was really surprised at how many racist jokes there were, like it was really normal, very odd!
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New York Day 1: Views, steak and cheesecake!
After 18 hours of solid packing we were pretty tired as we woke for the journey to Gatwick at 04:30 am. Our 7 hour flight to New York was realtively uneventful, but it was a shame that Simon and I didnt manage to get seats next to each other. I noticed that as the food went round those (including the Orthadox Jew 2 rows in front) who had ordered Kosher food got very nice looking dinners that were substantially larger than the regular meals which also arrived 30 mins later than the Kosher food! If you ever have to travel on Continental airlines that might be worth a try!
Once we had checked into our 'EconoLodge' - classy hotel that it isn't - we decided our first meal in New York would be our 'Blow Out' meal, we were able to enjoy it because we hadn't been here long enough for our stomachs to be corrupted with rich American food (I was so ill when we went to Texas for SXSW06). Our chosen venue was Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steak House, fresh bread was constantly brought to our table, I think we ate two whole loaves, it was lovely! I ordered a Manhattan - corny I know! which I realised I didn't like all that much after all! For starters I ordered crab cakes in Cajun sauce, which was quite spicy but wonderful. It was the steak though that really stole the show, 8oz of Fillet Mignon (the only 8oz steak on the menu), I didn't know meat could taste like that!
Full of delicious steak we went to the 'Top of the Rock' at the Rockefeller / GE building for a sunset view. We had it on good recommendation that this was better than going up the Empire state building because there are less queues and you get to see the Empire state building, also turns out that it was where the famous photo of the men on the girder was taken. It was wonderful, such an amazing view, well worth a visit if you come to New York. Afterwards we went hunting for cheesecake which I found surprisingly full of sugar and without the lovely crushed biscuits I was expecting. A nice stroll back to the EconoLodge took us via Broadway and Times square
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Lithuania Day 8
We are home safe and sound now after a fantastic holiday in Lithuania. The food was excellent, the people friendly, we learnt a lot and and really enjoyed ourselves. Thanks go to everyone we met (or met again) and especially to Rita for making us feel so welcome. I will definitely be back, perhaps in 2009 for the millennium festivities.
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Lithuania Day 7
Our plans to see the Soviet Theme park today were hampered for the same reason as yesterday, far too far to travel if you set out at 11am. Journey from Vilnius would have included two sparsely running buses and a 30 minute walk. The park contains recovered sculptures of prominent Soviet leaders that were built in Lithuania under the occupation. The park also has a zoo and a mini Train!
Wanting to see a bit of Lithuania outside of the capital, Simon and I headed to Trakai. Trakai is a beautiful town on a series of Islands surrounded by lakes, at the top there is the only Eastern European castle built on an Island.
Trakai is only 40 minutes away from Vilnius and well worth a trip. We decided to get to the Train station from our hotel by bus. A note if you are traveling in Vilnius by trolly bus, unlike the private busses you cant actually buy tickets on board. Quite an important point, we threw some money to the driver which he was ok with but we didn't get a ticket in return. So when the ticket inspector decided to do a spot check we were a bit scared! luckily for us there was a bit of a kerfufufful as the ticket inspector found an illegal traveler before us and dragged him off the bus.
Hurriedly scrambling off the bus we ducked into a bakery before our train, I ordered entirely in Lithuanian (with some pointing) some random looking baked goods. These turned out to be 2 different types of pasties, one doughnut and a brioche filled with vegetables.
The train was quite exciting, lovely old classic trains really high up from the platform. Its worth noting that, for the smaller routes at least, you can buy tickets on the train, quite a relief! we saw lots of forrest on the journey to Trakai, as well as some allotments and a huge stork flying to the biggest nest we had ever seen!
Arriving in Trakai we explored the castle a little and had a look round the museums. Trakai castle used to be the home of the Teutonic knights which is pretty exciting!
Trakai is also home to the Karaite who settled there long ago, the architecture food and culture still remain. We ordered a traditional Karaite dish unsure what to expect. When it arrived it was very very similar to a Cornish pasty! I guess some things are universal.
We arrived back in Vilnius in time to go to Rita's for dinner. We intended to bring a bottle of Lithuanian honey liquor as it is apparently traditional to bring as a guest to someone's home. On arrival you then all drink a shot, (be careful not to shake hands over the threshold or whistle indoors though as thats bad luck - according to the random city spy map we found). However we couldn't find any of the right brand so we made do with a nice bottle of JP-Chenet.
It was really lovely of Rita to cook for us, and a fantastic dinner it was too. All in all we have enjoyed some lovely Lithuanian food this week. After dinner we went for a really nice walk toward the old town to see the city view by night.
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Lithuania Day 6
After failing to make breakfast this morning we discovered that our first choice of destination today was over 3 hrs drive away. Without a car or ability to drive this was pretty much out of the question. A shame really because it looked really exciting, we wanted to visit the Hill of Crosses. Story has it that a man with a very sick daughter fell asleep on a hill had a dream that if he put a cross on the hill his daughter would get better, lithuanians have always put great stock into the translation of dreams so he planted the cross, his daughter made a miraculous recovery and people have been putting crosses on the hill ever since.
During the Soviet occupation, the soldiers removed burned and melted most of the crosses during the day and in the night Lithuanians replenished the crosses, this cycle continued as a symbol of resistance. In 1990 there were 55,000 crosses, today you can buy crosses from vendors near the hill to add to the collection.
Our second plan involved hiring bikes from the hotel and visit the TV tower. On the face of it may not sound particularly interesting, however this is basically where independence was regained for Lithuania.
In 1990 although the country announced its independence from Soviet rule, it then suffered dreadfully economically, and the faith of the people in their new independence was stretched. Early 1991 saw the introduction of food rationing with inflation rising to 100%. Protesters and supporters of the communist party tried to raid parliament in outrage, but were deflected. The countries new leader anticipated an attack and called for all independence supporters to surround prominent and important buildings in Vilnius.
The KGB were still in Lithuania at this time and the Soviet army responded to the protests by sending tanks to try and take advantage of the unrest to reclaim the city. Tanks and troops manage to seize a lot of buildings in Vilnus and capture other city's in Lithuania. They stormed the surrounded TV tower at 1:25am on january 18th killing 14 people. The last pictures transmitted from the tower were of a Soviet soldier running toward the camera to switch it off.
The next morning the Lithuanians were so appalled at the events of the night before that 50 000 joined together around the Supreme council building in solidarity of the fallen, Soviet troops withdrew. A peace treaty with Russia was signed at the end of January and following this there was a landslide referendum in favor of an independent state.
It turns out however that although being the largest building in the Baltic states you cant actually find it unless you already know where it is on a map. You cant just cycle in the direction and hope you will always be able to see it. Learn from our mistake here. Below is a map of our attempt, this gMaps pedometer trace is where we should have gone. The white circle marks the TV tower.
Despite the roundaboutyness of our route we had a lot of fun. Simon got to see some of the Russian Orthodox churches from my adventure the other day, we explored the much more affluent areas of Vilnius with some very swanky houses and saw the Parliament building. Upon giving up on a pitiful attempt to reach the TV tower we enjoyed having a recky round the old town (a UNESCO world heritage site).
On the way back we decided to visit the KGB museum, not a fun excursion but interesting nevertheless. The Museum is in the building that once housed the KGB headquaters so a lot of the furniture and exhibits the museum creators found in the building and have preserved. We saw some interesting looking spy machines for tapping phone conversations and there is lots of informative information about the little heard of Partisan freedom fighters. Being relatively recent history there are also lots of interestng photos and personal memorabilia and stories.
By far the most disturbing part of the museum is the enormous basement where you can wander around the cells, torture chambers, exercise areas (pictured above) and execution rooms of the Soviet secret police. Everything is just how it was left when the KGB was moved out of Lithuania in 1991, it is impossible to put into words quite how eery and shocking the feeling of being in there. This was not helped by the museum curators switching off the lights when we were deep in the cells ready to close up, I had to stop a lady from locking Simon in the Execution rooms! It is the second but hopefully the last time I will run out of a museum in fear.
Tonight Simon and I plan to recover from our scary museum experience by eating a lot of Argentinean ste-ack, we are then off to meet Rita for cocktails somewhere in the many bars in Pilies street.
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Lithuania Day 5
Gosh, well most of today was spent recovering from the fun that was last night. Emerging for lunch Simon and I headed out in search of 'Saint Germain' which turned out to be the best food we have had here yet. Quite hard to find but well worth it.
Taking a bike-cab back to the hotel (40LT) we managed to catch the lightning talks, which although were not my field were quite interesting. I was particularly impressed with gSculpt which looks awesome.
After the talks we hung out in the bar with Andy Smith and met and Graham Stratton and drinking buddy from last night James Gardner for dinner of some delicious Hungarian food!
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Lithuania Day 4
There are many reasons why I didn't update this mini travel journal last night.
It was a bit of a relaxing day yesterday, I had a lovely long holiday lie in and met Simon for Lunch. We explored the outskirts of the old-town in the search for a resteraunt we found on the interwebs described as 'impossibly cheap lunch for those with an adventurous appetite' though when we got there it turned out to be a little too adventurous, the bread on the tables looked like it had been there for days. We ended up in quite a fancy Italian.
A quick castle hunt followed. The outline of the lower castle can be seen as dark paving slabs on the courtyard of the Cathedral, The much more impressive Gediminas tower is well worth a visit, the view from the top is really quite impressive.
The evening contained socializing with Python people; drinking, dancing and breaking of beer glasses. A good evening by all accounts.
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Lithuania Day 3
From our room you can see in the distance a lovely Russian Orthadox church peeping through the trees with green domes. Looking in the guidebook there was no sign of this particular church but there were a few Byzantine Russian churches scattered through the city. As Simon was still writing his slides for the talk this evening I decided I would hunt for Russian orthodox churches and Jewish Synagogues, partly because I love Russian and Byzantine architecture but also partly in an attempt to learn more about the other religions of the city.
Setting off on a bike hired from the hotel for 50LT (£5) was a great plan as it turned out, I could cover more ground and all the interesting samples were quite spread out. I started out in the vague direction I had seen the green church from the window, getting a bit lost I found instead a silver coloured disheveled church of byzantine style. Getting closer to take photos I soon discovered this was actually Vilnius prison. The guards were looking a little unnerved that I was photographing the area so I quickly cycled on.
Past a construction site on the main road it was evident that health and safety measures have yet to come a long way, none of the workmen were wearing goggles or hardhats despite using drills pickaxes and scafolding above. To get around the site I had to carefully avoid falling down a large dangerous road by going into a busy road, the footpath was in the process of being dug.
Cycling down Vytauto street was fascinating, all the houses were wooden with pointed roofs, peeling paing boarded up windows and a selection of subsiding foundations. If this was England these houses quite likely would not have been classed fit for habitation yet they were all occupied. I learnt from Rita yesterday that there are plans to pull down a lot of these houses in favor of rehousing the occupants in flats, though not enough flats would be available for those who currently live in all the houses. We have not yet seen any homeless people around Vilnius, which makes you wonder is it better for them that they live in houses that are rickety and falling down or on the streets as we have in the UK?
At the bottom of this road I found the other Byzantine style Russian Orthodox Church, much better cared for and preserved than the prison. I stopped in a rustic looking pub for some lunch, ordering in my best broken Lithuanian some soup, or at least it turned out to be soup when I pointed randomly at the menu it was a bit uncertain what I would get. It was very nice soup that came with a main dish of pork burger, potatoes and coleslaw with ketchup and bread.
The sun finally showed up as I traveled up hill to where I was pretty sure the green Russian church was, it had been dry thus far for once but now the sunshine was glorious. looking at the grass verge I saw that the sun had brought out the beetles, the grassy verge was now spotted with a large colony of red leaf bug type beetle, lots an lots of them.
Leaving the Beetles behind and going back on myself a little, I finally made it to the green Russian church which was indeed very beautiful, the amazingly green domes and bright white pillars made it and well worth the effort to get there. Inside was spacious yet very gilded containing a lot of pictures of Mary and other iconography very similar to catholicism.
I traveled home via Vilnius's only remaining Synagogue, the Gates of Dawn, and numerous other less notable catholic churches. Whilst they were interesting and good to visit I wouldn't recommend you make a special trip just to see. Pilies street on the other hand is going to be a wonderful place in a few years time (2009 for instance) currently bustling with cafes, bars and amber shops there is still a lot of construction work underway.
gMaps makes that 6.7877 miles, which for me is a good distance and although it took me 5 hrs I did spend a lot of the time in the pub, cafes and taking photos.
Back at the hotel Simon had just finished his preparation and I sneaked in to the conference room downstairs to watch him give his keynote talk, well received as ever. We were both pretty tired from our very different days so instead of joining the Google funded drinks we went out for and Indian meal, a quick drink in the sky bar. An exhausting but fun day.
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Lithuania Day 2
I learnt a lot about the Lithuanian culture and customs today. Simon is presenting tomorrow so he stayed at home working on his slides while I stretched my wings to the outskirts of the city and the amazingly large shopping mall there.
I met Rita about lunchtime and she showed me how to flag down one of the private buses. There are three types of bus in Vilnius, the normal buses (which are trolley buses, a bit like trams but with no tracks) funded by the council are very cheap though on Sundays run very rarely indeed. Then there are the private buses, companies that decide to start a bus service for a profit. The Private buses that look like normal buses run regular timetables and stop at the bus stops, there are also private buses that look like little white 16 seater minibuses which run preset routes but do not stop at the bus stops unless flagged. These are the most expensive but run more often on Sundays, and at 3LT which roughly translates to 60p isn't that pricey at all. The number 62 facing uphill on Kalvariju street will take you to the Akropolis shopping center.
If you have ever been to a large shopping center in France you will be able to picture the basic idea behind the Akropolis. There is one very large super market inside which opens out onto covered corridors filled with shops and stalls, the one here is about 10 to 15 times the size of the one in Morlet in northern France. We spent some time wandering round the clothes shops where I learnt that Lithuanian women's sizes are really rather different and their largest size seamed to be an equivalent to a 8-10 in the UK.
Also in this 2 story shopping center was a 13 screen cinema, a bowling alley and a decent sized ice rink, we watched the latter over a lunch of Scorpion fish at 'Pizza Jazz'.
Shopping centers are a relatively new phenomena in Lithuania apparently because up until very recently, 1990 in fact, it was a Soviet occupied country. It is quite strange to think that people like Rita who is the same age as me, grew up in a country with such a lot of turmoil in recent history. In 2004 Lithuania joined the EU and NATO. Today there are definite signs that the city of Vilnius is in preparation for 2009 when it will become the European city of culture, coinciding with the country's 1000th anniversary.
One of the reasons I like shopping in foreign countries is to understand the culture, for me nowhere is this more evident than in the groceries available at the supermarket.
For instance, the picture above is of a 'Sakotis' (pronounced shakotehs) there were such a lot of different types available, Rita explained that this is because it is a cake that Lithuanians are proud of, it is a National dish. Grandmothers make it in the countryside, it is very traditional to have with coffee or at weddings and special events. It consists mainly of flour egg and vanilla and is sometimes topped with chocolate. The two different colours you can get relate to whether the whole egg was used, if just the white of the egg is added to the mixture the cake is more crispy. I can personally vouch for the tastiness of the egg-yolk based cake. The wonderful spikeyness is achieved with a revolving horizontal spit in a special oven that lets the mixture drip.
Amongst the other things I enjoy about supermarkets abroad are the vegetables and fruit, looking at what is unusual and what they have like us but bigger / smaller. E.g. huge aubergines and tiny tiny oranges the size of grapes, though I think they were a different breed. Looking at what is imported too is also often revealing, we found Russian caviar and vodka which considering our proximity is possibly not surprising. Beer is more prevalent than wine by a large degree because of the climate so there are a number of imported wines, though I did try some quite nice coastal Lithuanian sparkling white wine at dinner this evening.
Lithuanians are proud of their meet and cheese, and rightly so, there is a lot of good meat and cheese. I don't think I have ever seen so much salami in one place! The main forms of cheese are quark based which are creamy and medium textured or a harder yellower holy cheese that is quite tasty, a lot of variations with herbs and paprika can also be found. Chocolate covered soft mild cheeses, as with most eastern European countries are also well loved here.
Rita also taught me some handy Lithuanian phrases today which is great, now I don't feel quite so rude when dealing with shop assistants or waitresses! I have found in the past that all you really need to get by is a smile and a bit of intuition (or imagination) but the ability to say 'I don't understand', 'thank you' or 'I'm sorry I trod on your foot' makes things much more polite
I would definitely recommend a trip to the supermarket in a foreign country if you get a chance, it is a great way to learn about a culture and to cheaply try some of the local cakes and cuisine.
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Lithuania Day 1
Vilnius greeted us with a torrent of ran as we landed late last night. It was still was a more than a little soggy this morning when we set out after breakfast. After stopping to buy umbrellas, Simon and I still made the most of the town. Walking around taking in some of the sights we saw no less than seven wedding parties and one funeral, including one wedding in Vilnius cathedral.
On recommendation we traveled to a fantastic traditional Lithuanian resteraunt where we ate the interesting if a little stogey 'Zepplins' and grilled meat, washed down with local beer.
More than a little drenched we sloshed back to the hotel for Simon to write his EuroPython keynote. Breaking for a while to meet up with an old dear friend and her boyfriend in the sky bar on the 22nd floor, and then again for an amazing steak dinner in a nearby pub.
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IceTowers
IceTowers — Thanks to Jim Purbrick for introducing us to this fantasticaly adictive game to us at Barcamp London! mine is already on order!
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Oxford's Botanical gardens
Here is an idea for some weekend fun, how about visiting the Botanical gardens in Oxford. Simon and I are endeavouring to go adventuring at least once a week, where adventuring is defined as going somewhere fun and unusual.
Last week we went down the Emergency stairs at Totenham court road tube station to get to the platform, which was great fun and seeing the underbelly of the station was pretty unusual. Yesterday it was adventuring in the Oxford University Botanical Gardens.
The Gardens are the third oldest scientific garden in the world, founded in 1621 they were initially aimed as a research area for investigation of the use of plants in medical research.
They were one of the main inspirations for Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland' and it has also been said that the Pinus nigra (Austrian Pine) where Oxford Professor J. R. R. Tolkien spent a lot of time sitting under, bears a remarkable resemblance to the walking talking tree people (Ents) in the 'Lord of the Rings'.
We didn't know this at the time however, Simon took me on the surprise adventure mainly to see the glass houses, which are indeed fun! They are slightly similar to the Eden project, though on a smaller scale. My particular favourite (and I think Simon's too) was the palm house, thin and unassuming trunks explode at the top into leaves over one meter long!
Entrance is cheap (adults only £2.70) and it is quite fun to run around and see so many unusual plants and mini environments. I will be going again in April after they have sowed the seeds for the giant Lilly's!
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