The Accidental Tourist: September 2008

So the team had dinner at a restaurant where the name translated to English is Honeycomb. It was in a kind of catacomb area and made a Honey Beer which is typical to the area. They served the beer by the meter!! We had 2 meters of beer and then another 2 meters!! The beer was excellent. We had one that was dark and then a lighter one.

The woman on the left is Lina (our R&D Subject Matter Expert) and Virginija (the Business Develoment Manager). Lina is so young she doesn't remember the Soviet occupation and Virginija has some of the most amazing stories. Virginija said she wouldn't change her life at all, she knows what she has and is so grateful because she can contrast her life with freedom with her life under the Soviets.

On the far left is Aida, she also has a good memory of the occupation of the Soviets. Then sitting is Lina and standing is Imola (she is a Hungarian from Romania!). You can barely see the other Lina (she is the one above) then it is Virginija and then Jolita (the manager for R&D). What a great group of people I so enjoyed our meal and trying the Lithuania foods.

This next pic just includes me (Jolita is taking the pic). And the next are the fermentation tanks for the beer. One thing I learned is that in Lithuania toasting with out making eye contact results in the exact same thing it does in the the US. I think it might be a Universal knowledge. If you don't look directly into the eyes of the person you are toasting with and clinking glasses with you will have 7 years with no sex. To say the least we were all very careful to look directly into each others eyes as we clinked glasses!!! It is too funny...I confirmed that is this also the case in Germany and France.

Outside the restaurant before dinner, Virginija and Imola. These 2 talked about having to stand in lines for rice, flour and cooking oil. Imola shared when she was a child in Romania, she had seen a line forming one day and went and stood in it until her parents came home from work and they found her there. She said she was the hero for thinking of getting in the line and holding her family's place until an adult got there. Virginija talked about no electricity for weeks at a time, sometimes with no water or sewer. She said that is was always hit or miss and many nights the electricity would be turned off to entire towns after 8PM. What amazing stories. And we have a fit when our electricity is off for 1 or 2 hours.

Boy what a great trip. Kaunas used to be the second largest city in Lithuania it is now the third largest. It is a wonderful city, but I was amazed at how few people were on the streets. The Western Europe Cities are bustling all times of the day and it was so quiet in downtown Kaunas.

Some pictures of the city, some spectacular buildings. When the Russian occupation started many of the churches were converted to Offices or Manufacturing Facilities. It has been in recent years that the communities are working to convert them back to their original state.