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Baltics trip
Day 6 - 21st May - Siauliai, Lithuania (Part 2)
Back in Siauliai, we went back to the Church of St Peter and Paul.
Brooches and Rosaries
Praying
I don't know what ARYA is. Strangely, it seems to be an Indian thing, "a term in Hinduism with a variety of meanings, but generally along the lines of "kind", "favorable", or "devoted.""
Crosses in the courtyard
Church exterior
We had a few hours to wait for our bus to Riga, in Latvia, so we sat at a cafe and waited.
Shopping street
The cafe was very fond of Peking Cabbage, using it in all their salads
Despite it being a Wednesday afternoon, a lot of people were free to walk around.
We then went to walk in a shopping centre.
I walked by a Triumph store and noticed, unsurprisingly, that there was less padding than in Singapore.
There was a sex toy shop (it didn't sell porn) in the shopping centre. As I gazed at "glow in the dark pussy opener", "cuff in the dark" and "chateau rouge ankle cuffs", I suddenly threw back my head, screwed my eyes shut and gasped 'Oh my God'. nw.t started laughing and a burp of Coke gas exited his nose. Interestingly enough, it was the first sex toy shop manned by girls that I'd seen outside of Singapore (the significance of this will become clear in a later Japan Travelogue post).
The supermarket was open till midnight daily. That's even later than in Singapore.
Lithuanian Romance Novels, sold in a department store
Christian icon sold beside [Pagan] Ancient Egyptian-inspired wares. Hah.
One salami seems to cost 6-7x the other (it says the higher price is per kg, but the packs were about the same size as the other brand).
Kebab store. The kebabs in the Baltics couldn't compare to Western Europe, let alone Germany. They were slightly better than Singapore though (partly due to the machine actually rotating properly - in Singapore they usually do not turn regularly but jerk along).
Notice the weighing scale. They are very niao. This joint gave me fries inside my kebab - maybe they thought they were selling gyros.
Cute sign to turn off your engines in the bus terminal
Rare visual proof of u r wt u wr:
'*Picture of frog with crown sticking tongue out* Kiss me'
Notice they are wearing shirts which are identical except for shade.
In the bus station, there were signs telling people not to reverse into the lots (presumably because of fumes). Hah.
When it was time for our bus to come, we found to our alarm that there was no bus this day. We had tried to buy a ticket to Riga on the same day, but the stupid woman at the ticket counter had told us "ticket in bus", not telling us that there was no bus this day. So we trooped down to tourist information to find an alternate route, and the very helpful lady found one for us, though we had to transit through Panevezys (on the upside, another place on the map in the Medieval 2: Total War - Kingdoms Teutonic campaign I've visited!).
"Pamusis village community Christmas party. 1st-4th formers are invited 'To visit Santa at the fir tree and behind it'. We guarantee: for those sinless, reconciled and debtless - heaven; more and more rapid sledging; fox's porridge with lots of love and even more mixing; bear's fast wheat with honey; crow's cheese sweet; witch's prank and promises; Santa's gifts and much more fun ..."
I don't know about you, but I'm not going behind the fir tree with Santa.
I have no idea why this was in English, since it was targeted at 1st-4th formers, but it was lucky for us that it was.
Map of Lithuania
Very ugly rainbow outfit
At the Panevezys terminal, to add insult to injury, birdshit splatted in front of me while we were waiting for the next bus.
Hellish bus rides: Utrecht, Amsterdam, Paris, London
I wouldn't take a bus to those places.
There is a "Ecolines" in Europe - presumably competition for Eurolines.
HWMNBN in a dark hall in the Panevezys terminal
One of my parting thoughts on Lithuania: there were a lot of girls wearing weird and disgusting stockings.
We finally reached Riga quite late, and had to get used to another country - one worth more than the Euro, no less. nw.t said Riga felt more Western European than Lithuania. I agreed: the prices were definitely higher.
Freshly-squeezed orange juice. It works out to about US$2 a cup (!).
I gave 2 centu (2/384 Euro equivalent in Lithuanian currency) to a busker in Riga.
Strange seats in Riga tram
I got more looks in the Baltics than in Singapore. This was weird as there were more guys with long hair than in Singapore. I will therefore ascribe the looks to vile anti-Asian racism. Hurr hurr.
In Riga we stayed for 3 nights at a wonderful homestay. The only downside was that it was quite far from town, in a rich suburb.
Sign urging kids to run across the road in gendered pairs so they won't get knocked down
Sign picturing a scene a few seconds before the car knocks the guy down
We had dinner at a restaurant ("Patriarche" - HAHA) near the homestay. They had "Sea monsters soup" (calamari and shrimp).
Restaurant's menu, with chewing gum, Ritter Sport, almonds and pistachos (?!)
Cold advocado soup with shrimp, Bacon snack (bacon, egg, peppers - there were no peppers inside), solanka, cream soup with fried honey chicken. And of course lots of dill.
YC tried to take a picture of the menu and they said we couldn't. Maybe they thought we were from the Latvian price-fixing commission.
The homestay was full of pets: there was one dog (Sara) and 4 cats (Desmond Tutu [the all-black one hurr hurr], Skoda, Mouse and Fritz).
Quotes:
[On Lithuanian mannikins and endowments] This is one of the few countries where the mannikins are smaller than the locals. [Ed: Not true, not everywhere is like Singapore and Malaysia]
[On an ad for a concert] What the hell? Def Leppard. [Me: They look like they're from the 80s] They are from the 80s. This place is like 20 years behind the times.
