Eglė

Hi,

I'm feeling very very great today! The spring finally came, the sun was shining, I was grinning till my cheeks started to hurt. And... I've already packed my stuff home. Going tomorrow early morning, so I'm even happier. We're going to have 1 week of Easter holidays, so I'll finally get some rest and spend more time with my family. My brother and even my mom (what a wonderful coincidence!) are having holidays too, which means it's gonna be perfect.

Hm, Lithuanian cuisine... First, it is quite heavy and fat. Not everything, of course, but since our country was an agrarian in the past, the farmers had to work all day long, very hard. Thus they ate to maintain constant energy. Our "traditional" dish is called cepelinai. They are oval-shaped boiled balls, made form raw and boiled potato mash (80/20) with minced meat inside. The dish is served with sour-cream souce with spirgai (which is fried small cubes of meat). Mm, and the appearance of the dish is not very pleasant for most people... Anyway, I love them!

Another dish is potato pancakes. That is raw potato mash plus minced onions and spice, cooked like normal pancakes. Some add meat as well. I also love them, though they are heavy.

You might have noticed I used "" for traditional. That's because potatoes were brought here 300 years ago only. Our really traditional food is various poultries, but potatoes and cepelinai are extremely popular. So, they have become a part of out culture.

Sorry for such length...

By the way, how's the weather in Lisbon? How are your studies?

E.

So... what about the pics? I always imagined Lisbon as having sort of a fisherman style, some old blocks of their houses... You know, things connected with port. And of course, warm weather and a little chilly breeze in the evening. Maybe I'm just being too romantic.

So, you want to hear something about Vilnius and Klaipėda. Well, Vilnius is the capital and is famous for baroque churches (plus one amazing Gothic church that Napoleon said would love to take back home and watch it in the morning having breakfast . Those history lessons, ha ha...) and a lovely old town. There's also a castle (rather a remnant of it), an arch cathedral and other sights. . It also has some great facilities for nightlife, though northern climate does its "sleeping magic". The city has a few little drawbacks (like modern shops in old town, which should be left for small local shops, I think), but I really like it.

Kalipėda is a port of Lithuania. It is a long and narrow city, not very crowded or polluted. The sea is not far, there is a ferry to the Curonian Spit, which is protected by UNESCO. The ferry is extremely popular in the summers, since the beach in the CS is cleaner, nicer, broader and there air is very fresh. It is also very relaxing to walk or cycle there across the forest. Now, Klaipėda does not have much "wild" activity to offer. But maybe that's what I like about it. In the summers we have a Sea Festival for 3 days, which attracts a lot of Lithuanians and tourists from other countries. Then there are concerts, street theatre shows, a fair, art performances and other interesting things to do.

In general, I love Vilnius for its wonderful architecture and a lot of social events. But I adore Klapėda because it is so warm and cosy and I've lived there for 18 years, more or less.

If you have pics - I will be glad to see them.

By that "industrialized" I wanted to say that e.g. here, in Lithuania, some cities have a lot of factories, a lot of other manufactures and similar things, so they are like industrial centres. Some cities don't "make" anything. They basically run on services and tourism.

There are also academic cities (not in Lithuania, though) such as Oxford, which are based on education facilities; then sort of a trade and bussiness cities. I wanted to know what is the whole...em... "idea" of Lisbon. Doesn't really matter now, since you described it very professionally.

It's so cool that you can choose such languages. Here you can choose between English and German as first and then, with respect to your first choice, English, German, Russian and in some schools French or Latin as the second foreign language. I have English as my first and Russian and the second language. Though, sad to say, I don't know Russian well...