Train to Nowhere

One of the perks of being a university professor in Europe is the convenience and opportunity to travel throughout the continent for conferences. Lithuania is fairly central and the airport affords connections to all major hubs, so it is a pretty sweet deal, especially since several discount airlines also run through Vilnius.

This fall I traveled to Gdansk, Poland for the 2nd International Interdisciplinary Conference, “Dreams, Phantasms and Memories.” I know, the title sounds amazing and full of potential, and for the most part, the organizers did a good job–there were some hiccups, one of which was that the hotel receptionist somehow thought the conference had been moved and/or canceled and so several of us participants milled around for a few hours trying to figure out what to do, but on the whole, the panels were interesting, the scholars articulate, the reception dinner tasty, and the location interesting. I’d never been to Gdansk, though I have been to other parts of Poland, and on the whole, love the country. However, one was less a hiccup and more like a massive diaphragmatic seizure,

So, to the massive diaphragmatic seizure. The conference was set up to explore various aspects of dreams as they appear in art, literature, film, archaeology, neurology, psychology, and any number of other disciplines. I presented a paper on a British novel called The Raw Shark Texts (awesome realist fantasy, highly recommended!) and was on a panel with another literary scholar, and a film critic. Some of the other panels were on dreams in the use of therapy, brain function while dreaming, and dreams and memory conflation in Holocaust survivors’ narratives. All was well and good. Until the final presenter in the final panel. What was billed in the program as a presentation on Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman graphic novels–and I was sooo looking forward to that one!–turned into a presentation on how to avoid being possessed by demons through dreams. Seriously. The presenter first told us about the metaphysical research center in India where she and her colleagues did their ‘spiritual research,’ which unlike other research cannot be replicated because it requires special enlightened capabilities that only her guru possessed. She then enumerated the various ways that demons enter dreams to possess people. The room was was silent as she spoke, but as I looked around, while simultaneously avoiding her eye-contact, I could see smirks, eye-rolls, could hear guffaws and even some ill-concealed straight-out laughter. The moment the Q&A started it was a shark-circling, blood-in-the-water frenzy. They ripped her apart.

On one hand, I sympathized with her as she was in earnest about her topic and sincerely believed everything she said. And while I do not share her religious beliefs, as this was clearly what she was presenting, neither did I appreciate the mocking of them by the audience. On the other hand, the conference organizers should never have accepted her abstract. What she presented was not research.

On that note, the conference ended. Surely the drama was over and my conference experience would end happily. It did, but not without another seizure. I had nearly three hours to get to the airport after check out, so I moseyed around the city for a bit after breakfast the next morning, then got to the train station and, since there no one at the window, decided I’d buy my ticket from the agent on the train. Then I tried to figure out which train was the right one and get to that platform.

‘Tried.’

Once the train took off, I queued in line to the agent. Since my Polish is not great, I showed her the paper with the airport stop name. She looked at it a moment, then sold me a ticket.

I went back to my seat and watched the Polish countryside roll on by. After the first two or three stops, I watched the electronic ticker list the upcoming stops, counting to see how many more I had. It pass through once. Then again. Then again. The name of my stop did not come up. I looked at my ticket and it did not have the name of my stop either. I wondered if the name on my ticket was a transfer since I had shown the agent the clearly written name of the airport stop in Polish! on my paper. My stop came up. I exited. Into the middle of a cow field.

The agent sold me a ticket to a cow field!

For a moment I thought, I’ll take a taxi, since surely it can’t be that far to the airport. I looked around for a taxi sign and found one. In the middle of the cow field. There was  no taxi. There was no road. There was also no ticket agent here, but only a machine, so I bought another ticket to take me back the way I had come, with a stop at the major station I had noted a few stops back, and saw from the route map in the train that it transferred to the actual train I needed to get to the airport.

I did it. It worked out. That’s me on my new train (I hoped) to the airport.

But seriously. Seriously. The agent knew where I wanted to go. She could have told me I had to get off the train at the transfer station. She could have told me I was on the wrong train. But, no. She sold me a ticket to a cow field.

I get that foreigners often irritate nationals, and that a train agent might get tired of dealing with hapless travelers who don’t speak the language. But she just sent me on my merry way without concern that I might have to get to the airport in a hurry (fortunately I had plenty of time and my ordeal only ate about an hour of my three hour surplus). But still.

I will say, though, that she was the only Pole I encountered who treated me poorly. Everyone else went out of their way to make me feel welcome and to help me along my way. I still love Poland. But I don’t want to see any more cow fields.

Christmas in Vienna; Epiphany in Vilnius

I seem to have started a new tradition of traveling to a new place for Christmas. Last year I spent Christmas with two friends in Portugal (sooooo much warmer than Vilnius!) and this year, a friend and I went to Vienna. Vienna is known for is abundance of Christmas markets, and though there was no snow, there was certainly the spirit of Christmas everywhere.

Our holiday, though it ended well, did not start out pleasantly. My friend arrived two days earlier than I, and had a horrible experience with the Airbnb we had booked. The owner of the flat had neglected to indicate that the building was under extensive construction, with dirt and debris everywhere, missing lights in the halls, scaffolding outside, and construction workers coming and going, with the noise that entails. My friend was also harassed by a construction worker, who cornered her in the dimly lit stairwell. When my friend told the owner, his response was: “Sorry for the inconvenience. Let me know if it happens again.” Really!?! So, my friend has to be accosted and threatened again for him to take it seriously? “Sorry for the inconvenience” seemed to be the owner’s default response to everything, including when there were no basic supplies in the flat. Sorry for the inconvenience. Go out and buy them yourself.

Needless to say we cancelled the rest of our stay in that flat and lodged a complaint against the owner. At first he refused to refund any of our money, but with the help of the great people at Airbnb, we were able to get back most of our money. This stress put a damper on our stay, but that’s not Vienna’s fault. In fact, the schnitzel and strudel made up for a lot of it.

Back in Vilnius, I was able to participate in the Epiphany procession on January 6 (also called Three Kings Day in some places). We walked from the Gates of Dawn to the Cathedral behind the Wise Men looking for the Christ Child to deliver his gifts.

It was a beautiful way to begin the New Year!

 

Doors in Tallinn

Better late than never. Last Easter I went up to Tallinn, Estonia. I love doors and windows (a lot of my pictures are of these and other architectural features), but I noticed the lovely colors and put together this collection, and a metal owl for good measure.

Then there was this gem…

 

Christmas and New Year Traditions

In our last class before the break I asked some of my Lithuanian English language students about traditions for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Here in Lithuania, Christmas Eve is the big day, when family gathers together for a traditional meal. I was told the meal should contain 12 dishes, most of which are very specific–including poppy milk (aguonu pienas) and some kind of herring. I was also told that the table will have a white tablecloth, under which are pieces of straw. At one point during the night, everyone takes a piece and the one who draws the longest piece is said to have long life. I asked what happens to the one who pulls the shortest straw, and was met with a lot of nervous laughter. (ie: Don’t pull the short straw!)

Another tradition that my students told me was that on Christmas Eve it is believed that animals talk and can tell the future; however, you don’t want to listen to them when the talk because something rather cryptic and unspecified will happen to you. So, on Christmas Eve in Lithuania, you don’t want to pull the short straw or listen to talking animals! (Below: The Vilnius Christmas tree, the Presidential Palace, a nativity scene in Cathedral Square–don’t listen to the animals if they talk to you!)

This year I spent Christmas in Portugal with a friend of mine, and in the city of Braga they have their own tradition for Christmas Eve. People gather in the public squares and drink Moscatel wine and eat bananas. Why? I have no idea. I had never had Moscatel before, and though I like sweet wine, this was like Manischewitz and cough syrup. But the twisted cobbled streets of Braga were like Times Square before the ball drop, and apparently other people really enjoyed their Moscatel because there were a lot of very merry people out on the streets. (Below: Braga Christmas tree, friends in front of the Braga sign, and scenes from Porto)

After Christmas, my friend and I returned to Madrid, Spain, where she lives. There, a New Year’s Eve tradition is to eat a grape for every stroke of the clock right before midnight. The grocery stores even sell 12 pre-packaged grapes so you are prepared. (Below: the Crystal Palace, the changing of the guards in front of the Royal Palace, the Almudena Cathedral, and me in Retiro Park, where I had to buy a pair of sunglasses because it was so bright!)

And now I am back in Lithuania in what has also become a New Year’s tradition–getting over a cold. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

 

 

American Culture in Vilnius: Rent, the Musical

 On Saturday, some friends and I went to see a production of Rent, put on by the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre in Vilnius. According to the program, this is the first presentation of the musical in the country, and given Lithuania’s conservative culture, I was curious to see how a musical that includes openly homosexual relationships, blatant sexual content, AIDS, drug use, and urban poverty would go over. I applaud the theatre for choosing this play, and the actors for performing in it.

There were, however, several obstacles to overcome in viewing this production. At this point I issue the obligatory spoiler alert for both the Vilnius production (though it has now ended its 2 day run) and Jonathan Larson’s musical. Continue on at your own peril.

It goes without saying that as the cast was all Lithuanian, this is the whitest Rent I have ever seen. I actually laughed when Mimi sang about her home where the “Spanish babies cry,” as Mimi Marquez was played by a spindly blond with a thick Baltic accent. Several of the actors struggled with the English (Maureen was nearly incomprehensible while speaking, though her singing was clearer), the choreography better resembled a community college production than a professional company,  and the acting was overwrought and lacked subtlety, but these were not as glaring as some of the implications of changes to the production itself.

Some changes were cultural, I suspect. I wondered as I watched just how much a Lithuanian audience would understand the references to American urban culture at the end of the 1990s. Could they understand the ironic contrast between the open spaces of the idealized west versus the press of New York inner city squalor in “Santa Fe”? Did they have the background of how race, sexual orientation, poverty, and a corporate/capitalism-based pharmaceutical industry have impacted America’s LGBT and minority communities? I had to hope so. There were some inserted expositions of dialog, namely to actually describe what AIDS is. A friend of mine whose Lithuanian is better than my own pointed out that the Lithuanian subtitles that were displayed above the stage also spelled out the full name of MIT, and went to great lengths to differentiate each of the slang terms for drugs as they were named. I get these changes. It is a fine line between spelling everything out and offering small changes to help an unfamiliar audience better understand the context.

The musical began with a shortened rendition of the song “La Vie Boheme” in part, I think, to introduce each character by name, which was inserted as a kind of beauty pageant display where each character stepped forward as he or she was named. “La Vie Boheme” was reprised later in its original spot, which, while repetitious, was not onerous.

But other changes were less logical. Rather than end Act 1 with the defiant “La Vie Boheme,” the play inserted “Will I,” which should have been sung during the scene at the Life Support meeting. Ending the first act on such an uncertain and downcast song, first of all changed the emotional power going into the second act, but also unnecessarily disrupted the chronology. Deleted was the scene where Maureen and Joanne break-up (which happens in the middle of “La Vie Boheme”), so that when Joanne remarks on this at the start of Act 2, it did not make sense. Gone also was the entire riot that Maureen’s performance starts, which is celebrated at the end of “La Vie Boheme” and which precipitates Mark’s offer of a contract with Buzzline. Again, when this was mentioned later, we had to wonder ‘what riot’?

The most alarming change to the play, however, and the one with disturbing implications, is the ending. While Rent has as its source material La Boheme, which has a much bleaker ending with the consumptive Mimi dying, Rent resurrects her after a vision of the afterlife where the previously deceased Angel tells her to “Turn around, girlfriend, and listen to that boy’s [Roger’s] song.” But this did not happen in the Vilnius production. Shockingly, when a white clad Angel returned to the stage to escort Mimi away, they kept right on walking off the stage. And that was it. That was the end. There was no reprise of “No Day But Today,” where the surviving characters, which should include Mimi, sing about taking each moment as it comes and celebrating life and love in the here and now. Nope. Angel was literally the Angel of Death, and Mimi and Roger’s love ended after his heartfelt serenade, “Your Eyes.”

Why?

One of my friends suggested a small budget as the culprit, which would make sense if not for the fact that this production actually sang the same song twice, thus adding to the time and production rather than decreasing it.

Let’s look at the end of the play: the two characters who transgress conservative norms most severely–Angel, the cross-dressing gay man, and Mimi, the promiscuous stripper drug-addict–die. Rather than end triumphantly, as the original play text allows, we end with two of the three relationships broken by death, presumably due to their own lifestyle choices (ie: Angel died of complications of AIDS and Mimi from a return to drug use). Adding to my suspicion is the way the actors themselves portrayed the queer characters. With the exception of the actor who played Angel, who was a highlight in terms of acting and singing, the other actors who played gay characters seemed uncomfortable in their roles. While Angel and Collins did share two very passionate kisses on stage, and demonstrated a lot of physical contact and affection, the actor who played Collins was clearly reluctant and often passed off the tender moments with uncomfortable laughter or hesitation. The actors playing Maureen and Joanne were also less physical than other productions I have seen, though perhaps this was meant to play up the tension in their relationship. The overall effect, however, was that while the characters’ words said celebrate this love, the actors themselves undermined the message.

As this was my first foray into musical theatre here in Vilnius, I’ll have to withhold judgment that this was a sweeping commentary of one culture’s attitude toward complex societal issues. Maybe something was lost in translation this one time.

 

 

Riga, Latvia

Here are some pictures of my (not-so-recent) trip to Riga in at the end of March. Better late than never, I guess.

And of course, the Cat’s House.

A panorama of the city from the top of St. Peter’s

House of Blackheads

The Orthodox Cathedral

By the sea in Jurmala

My ‘toes’ in the Gulf of Riga

Freedom Monument

Guards at the monument

Market day

One of my favorite events in Vilnius is the Kaziuko Muge (St. Casimir’s Fair) which takes place in early March. I’ve always been attracted to shiny, colorful things, and this huge market, which extends from one end of Gedimino prospektus to the other and wraps around the Old Town, is full of them! There are traditional folk crafts, jewelry, scarves and hats (because, you know, it’s still 30 degrees out!) and food stalls with traditional Lithuanian foods.

There were even some live performances, like these student folk dancers (they pulled in by-standers to dance with them. Fortunately not me):

Medical experience

I visited the doctor for the first time since living overseas. I wasn’t quite sure how it would be, but the doctor was recommended by friends. He’s Australian, so his English was good (no jokes about Australians speaking English) and I felt comfortable with his expertise. My visit with him was professional, tidy, and very much like I have experienced back in the U.S.

He was concerned about my cough, and so he sent me over to the Centro Poliklinika, one of the medical clinics here, for a chest x-ray. My experience there, however, was not like any I’ve had in the U.S.

Since my doctor had called ahead, I did not have to wait to be seen. I handed the technician my appointment slip, he read it, and started speaking to me in Lithuanian. When I told him that I don’t understand Lithuanian very well, he went to his computer, typed something and showed me. In Google Translate he had written, “Take off your clothes.”

We were standing in the reception area of radiology. There were no other patients, but there were two other technicians. I made a gesture over my body: all my clothes or just the top?

He made circling motions over his chest, like he was rubbing himself down with oil or something. I got the picture. Another technician, a woman, added: “And bra.”

I had been warned by a friend that this kind of experience was usual, so I did as instructed. I’m not body shy, and I told myself this is their job, they do this all day. Besides, an 80 year-old woman had just finished up before I got there, so I told myself they had probably seen worse.

Once I was topless, the male tech ushered me into the x-ray room and rather mechanically positioned me chest-side against a large glass/plastic (very cold!) wall or plate. I held my arms out like a gingerbread man and then the tech went back to his little command station, mimed that I should take a deep breath, and he took the x-ray. He then re-positioned me like I was in the body-scanners at airports, with upraised arms, fully facing the glass window where he and the other techs could see me. Great. Again, he mimed breathing in, and he clicked the machine. That was it. He waved to my clothes. “Go home.”

I feel like I have been somehow initiated into a weird secret society.

Hero’s Journey

I was asked to speak at my landlord’s son’s middle school on Friday. The boy’s English class had been studying movies, Hollywood, stuntmen and such, and as a native English speaker, they wanted to talk with me about my life in California (I told them right away that I was not from Hollywood) and about movies they liked. Their teacher asked me to share something with them on the topic, and so I thought of the Hero’s Journey, a very common plot structure for most Hollywood movies, and quite frankly, most of Western literature. So, I showed them the upside-down check mark, we talked about backstory, inciting incidents, obstacles, the wise mentor trope, climax and resolution. We used the first Harry Potter movie as an example, and traced Harry’s journey to see if he followed the steps. (By the way, he does!).

After this discussion, we decided we wanted to write our own movie plot. So, I present to you, the 6th and 7th grade classes’ movie, Olaf the Bodybuilder.

Olaf was teased and bullied as a child because he had red hair and was overweight. However, his mother loved him and helped him through the experience. When Olaf grew up, he became a bodybuilder. One day, however, he received a mysterious text message that his beloved mother had been killed. He had to find out who the murderer was.

With the help of his friends, Olaf was able to track down the killer, only to find that it was his girlfriend! After an intense battle with her, she escaped, and so, Olaf’s journey will continue in Olaf the Bodybuilder 2.

They were sweet kids–the boys were squirrely and dominated the time (as you can probably tell by the movie plot), though I tried include everyone–but man, it reminded me of my student teaching days! (And why I didn’t become a middle school teacher). To be honest, though, sometimes my university students are just as bad. The joy’s of teaching.

 

No Snow Christmas

Everyone but me seems disappointed that we will not have a white Christmas this year. Granted, it is only Christmas Eve, so there is almost 24 hours left for the snow to fall…but, naw. While it is pretty to look out at a soft drift of newly fallen white powder, the aftermath of muddy slush or treacherously icy sidewalks, I can do without. It must be the California in me that doesn’t need snow to have Christmas.

I can also do without the seasonal colds, but apparently I don’t get an out on that. I’m sick. Like hack-up-a-lung, no voice sick. I’m doing my best Rudolph impersonation this year. Even so, my roommate and I are having friends over for Christmas Eve, and as long as I am not bedridden, tomorrow I’ll go to our Christmas morning church service, and then to a friend’s for lunch. I prefer a low-key Christmas, for various reasons, but it is also nice to spend the day with people you care about. I’ll also be able to Skype with the fam (and did a little bit earlier).

But even without snow, Vilnius does Christmas well. Here are just a few pictures of our Christmas market, and the main streets all decked out with boughs of holly (Not really. Mainly just LED lights).

Linksmų Kalėdų/ Merry Christmas!