Lithuania for Everyone

Things I enjoy about Lithuania that I've seen here in Vilnius:

1. All the crazy dye jobs on the old ladies. The colors are like third cousins-once removed to natural tones.
2. All the crazy dye jobs on younger women. Perhaps it is a commentary on the fact that dyeing one's hair is artificial anyway, so let's just stop pretending and trying to look natural. Lots of combos of light and dark on the same head. It's not punk, it's just...um... contrasting?
3. That the word for chocolate sounds very similar in Lithuanian and is easily picked up. Pronounced: sho-ko-lah-d.
4. Good pastries.
5. Cheap bus fare. A student single-ride ticket is 1 Lita. That's about 40 cents.
6. The little old wooden houses tucked in the midst of city blocks beautiful restored buildings.
7. Sour cream.
8. Pear cider, on tap.
9. A cafe culture.
   
10. The inability of anyone to be able to predict the weather here. Just look outside, prepare appropriately, and then put supplies for all other eventualities in your bag. Because they will happen later.
11. Friendly people, even if they don't smile.
12. The sense of a society in transition.
13. That there are more open-minded, fair-minded people here than not.
    

Things that are annoying:

1. That traffic only stops in the rotary after you march into the street. You have to walk into traffic to make it stop.
2. Cobblestone streets. Yes, they can be charming, but after a while, they are just bumpy.
3. All the graffiti all over the city.
4. So many ugly areas of the city, brimming with Communist charm, beyond the certain popular central neighborhoods.
5. Greasy, greasy, soggy, soggy potato pancakes.
6. A lack of direct routes anywhere. Sometimes wandering is good. Sometimes you just want to go.
7. Having a Museum of the Genocide completely leave out that whole Jews-Holocaust thing, except for a little (skewed-numbers) poster next to the bathroom, and focusing on the Communist era. (But more on that and the amended definition of "genocide" another time.)
8. Having one key to our room so that Arielle and I have to coordinate our schedules everyday to meet up. (Luckily, we bought cheapie cell phones to communicate. The ring tone I chose has frogs ribbit-ing.)
9. Ants.

At this closed movie theatre, a graffiti war is happening. Right now, the line says, "Lithuania for Everyone." Soon, it will be rewritten by the other side to say, "Lithuania for Lithuanians." And it just keeps going back and forth like that.