March was a local month, we didn't travel far. But I hope I intrigued you with the title.
Let's start with the big animals. We went to a local, boutique movie theater and watched a new documentary called "Mammoth Hunt."
It is 1968. Jonas Jurošas directs a play called "Mammoth Hunt" about people who are looking for a party and are not able to find it. The theater is always full. The play has lots of metaphors about communism and the fact how people are looking for that better life in communist system, but they can't find it because it doesn’t exist. A year later top communist party officials came to see the performance and shut it down. The director, Jonas Jurašas, was not allowed to work in any cultural setting. The plot twist is that the performance was filmed at night, in secrecy and the documentary is interviewing people, trying to that tape. Well, the tape was never found, but lots of interesting details were shared. For example, director Jurošas managed to emigrate to the U.S. in the early 1970s. He even directed plays at Yale university. People, interviewed in the documentary, talked about conspiracies of the soviet times, not knowing who is spying for KGB, what could happen if you do a “wrong” thing, etc. At the end, there were some strong messages about emigration. People who emigrate are immigrants in the new country and are a bit out of context in the home country. When they return, they are not the same person as they used to be and the home is not the same either. If you have a chance, I highly recommend watching this documentary. It is really well made.
We made a trip to Kaunas to see an Amsterdam school of architecture type building.
One apartment is reconstructed to the 1930s era. It is created by two guys who opened a similar Art Déco museum couple years ago. The tour takes 2 hours, the group (~15 people) can sit on all furniture, touch anything they want, open drawers, use the bathroom, etc. The tour is about that style of architecture, 1930s fashions, and stories of people who lived in that apartment and the building. It is amazing, fascinating and sad at the same time. Many people who lived there were Jewish. Some were killed, some survived. But before the horrors of the Worl War II, they had dreams, created businesses, played music, and enjoyed life. The exterior of the building has sculptures and motives indicating that it is of an Amsterdam school of architecture type that was popular in Amsterdam in 1930s. The interior is breathtaking. Two rooms are painted in a deep blue color that has some of the lapis lazuli material in it. Lapis lazuli was once more expensive than gold. When you see the walls in that museum, you can understand why. OK, remember about touching anything you want in the museum. You cannot touch the walls! But you can take a thousand pictures.
March in Vilnius is known for Kaziuko mugė (Kaziukas fair). It is an annual event dating many years back. People sell verbos (Lithuanian fancy equivalent to a palm branch for the Palm Sunday), arts and crafts, food items and lots of home made goods.
I think this year’s fair was huge – we didn’t manage to walk through the whole thing, our hands were full of various items. Verbos looked amazing; they may seem similar but no two of them are ever identical.
From the food items, I really enjoyed breads from various part of Lithuania, home made kastinys (something between sour cream and butter) from the west of Lithuania, warm gira (a drink similar to root beer and kombucha) was a bit odd drink. There were a few stands that smoked fish right there – smoked fish was really good. And there were lots of Latvians (?!) selling their national candy “karvute”, smoked chicken and blood sausages.
The kick to the Kaziukas muge are live performances of folk music and dances. Madison Lithuanian folk dance group "Žaibas" for sure could perform in Vilnius next year!
In Kaunas, I also visited an agricultural fair and sat in John Deere tractor. Many stands were selling plants. My favorite black currant bushes were only a few euros… (black currants are still rare and expensive in the US, although those that sell know how good they are). Overall, the fairs are nice in Lithuania, except parking is difficult – I have not seen a clear parking plan, suggestions on a website or enthusiastic helpers on a road. On the other hand, it seems that it is only us that are annoyed, everyone else doesn’t pay too much attention to this topic.
One other weekend to went to Druskininkai. It is a spa town in the southern Lithuania, right on the border with the Belarus. It really started as a “spa town,” but now they have an indoor year-round snow arena, outdoor activities, big water park, nice spaces to walk around, and big plans for the future. We visited a water park and I went to a 3 hour spa session (for 40 euros!). We connected with a family that used to live in Madison, WI. Modestas and Akvile were such good hosts! Some of the readers may know, but there is a whole mafia from Druskininkai in Madison, WI. This could be another sister city for sure!
Druskininkai has the best food – we ate at “Sicilia” twice. We tried pizza, but we also had a beef carpaccio, beef tongue and cheeks. The desserts are worth Instagram pictures and, obviously, saving some space for them!
We celebrated Easter in style. I love this holiday and decorating eggs is my holy time. I've got a special equipment for warming wax to decorate eggs. The stores sell bags of onion skin (we didn't know beforehand and collected our own bag of onion skins). We had dinner with Vaidas' family, kids rolled eggs and we all sat outside as it was a warm Sunday afternoon.
A few other random mentions from March.
We saw a Danish series filming in Gediminas prospektas. It was a pretty warm day and the crew were making snow all over the street.
We attended a national symphony orchestra’s performance where Andrew’s teachers is the main viola player.
And here is a picture from running practices that all boys attend on Monday evenings.
Enjoy the spring!
Milda