Lithuania: miscellaneous and offbeat, September 2005
Pictures of various semi-interesting things I saw on in Lithuania in the summer of 2005, and other miscellaneous pictures.
Seen in a supermarket in Vilnius: a fractal cauliflower, commonly known as Romanesco.
I had a funny incident in a grocery store in Vilnius. I was standing in front of the dairy case. A guy and a girl walked up to me and asked, in English, if I spoke English. The guy had a vaguely German/Scandinavian accent, so he wasn’t a native English speaker. I said yes. He asked me then if I know where to find “chocolate with cheese inside”. Despite the strangeness of the request, I figured I knew what he was talking about. There is a delicacy that kinda fits this description, except that’s a very, umm… awkward way to describe it.
It most closely resembles a mini-cheesecake, only it’s not like American style cheesecake. It’s a small slab of rich, sweet cheese concoction glazed with chocolate. It often has some flavoring mixed into the cheese: raisins, candied fruit, berries. I love it. I explained to them what it was and they seemed to think it was the thing they were looking for. But “chocolate with cheese inside” is a very odd way to describe it, indeed. So odd that when I told my mom about the incident she doubled up in laughter.
So here it is, in the picture.
A rickshaw sits and waits for passengers on Gedimino, the main street in the center of Vilnius. I never saw rickshaws in Vilnius again, on any of my subsequent visits.
In the Europa shopping mall in Vilnius there used to be two egg-shaped cafes that hung above the void off the second floor. One of them was Nokia-themed.
My mom in the ovoid cafe. The computer above her table supposedly can be used to send instant messages to Nokia cell phones (or something like that). But it does not provide regular internet access.
My dad is teaching the family cat kickboxing.
As I said above, a couple of foreigners asked me at a grocery store if I knew where to find chocolate with cheese inside, and I thought they were talking about chocolate-glazed mini-cheesecakes. It turns out it’s not the only kind of “chocolate with cheese filling” one can find in Lithuania. My sister later told me that a certain chocolate store actually sells chocolates filled with what is in Lithuania called “moldy” cheese, which encompasses blue cheese, gorgonzola and the like. So maybe that’s what the foreign couple was talking about!
Of course, I had to try it. It was a thin cylindrical chocolate shell that was filled with something like gorgonzola and topped with nuts. I liked it, but then I’m a person for who almost no food is too weird.
S and I At a mini theme park “The Waterfalls of Belmontas”. Belmontas is a sparsely populated, rustic area on the outskirts of Vilnius with spectacular nature views.
The Waterfalls of Belmontas is a bunch of restaurants in a country style setting. I would call it a 21st century fantasy on a 19th century country mansion. It has beautifully landscaped grounds with artificial waterfalls, a pond with black swans and a watermill, a few big restaurants and several small cafes and bars. Too bad that by the time we got there it was too dark to take pictures.
