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4 comments
Vilnius, only 17° at 8am but should be a nice sunny day today.
There are a lot of Russians here.Half of my hostel seems to be Russian… luckily my Russian (though bad) is much better than my Lithuanian!
Prices have risen quite a lot since I was last in Vilnius, especially in the tourist restaurants… pretty much the same prices as in Germany now.
Luckily there are still some cheaper and more ‘local’ places to eat, plus I have a kitchen in the hostel so can cook there.
One thing that I like about the former Soviet countries is that you tend to find restaurants from other former Soviet Republics.. here for example there are Georgian places,in Latvia I remember eating very good Uzbeki food.
Anyway Vilnius is a very chill place.Lots of green, great for wandering around.Today I’m going to see a contemporary art exhibition which looks pretty interesting.
Just cited a paper written by a guy called Guinness. Not a person of Irish heritage called Dr Guinness, mind. No, he’s of Chinese origin and it’s his *first* name. Something along the lines of Guinness Wong, or Guinness Zhang.
Do we really need to know the story behind how his parents came up with that name? Cause *somehow I think we can probably ~~guinness~~ guess*.
I was researching something yesterday, and came across the Youtube channel of Hallgrim Hansegård. This guy with the extremely Norwegian name is, well, Norwegian, and if you remember the legendary Eurovision song Fairytale, he was one of the background dancers. He apparently is quite a famous dancer, and has a dance company which is like a modern dance twist on Norwegian folk dances. The dances are highly athletic and require a lot of strength, but he had some tutorials on his channel. While I am not the best dancer, dancing is something I enjoy a lot, and European rhythms are easy anyway, so I thought why not. Let’s have some fun.
Kick the leg from behind, and change it. Okay, easy.
While kicking the leg, make sure to really throw the front leg, then add a beat. Okay, great. You can even turn your body. Good!
And now one and two and kick the leg and hold your right foot with the left and loop your left foot through it and then make a headstand on your left hand and touch your feet with the right hand and then bounce and now change the hand!
What.
I would say I am too old for it, but he is quite a few years older than me…
Anyhow.
Yesterday I came across the works of an illustrator who draws [beautiful Japanese urban scenes](https://mateuszurbanowicz.com/illustration/). He was apparently also one of the background artists for the famous Kimi No Na Wa (Your Name). I absolutely love them, and am considering buying a couple of his books. He’s a Polish guy, but lives in Japan.
Every time I’m shocked when I hear the name “Vietnam” in Vietnamese. That A-sound catches be off guard, it feels like the whole rest of the world pronounces it the other way. The wrong way, I suppose. While I’m at it, same when I hear somebody say “Islam” in Arabic. Same A-sound.
I’ve got an excuse, the Finnish letter Ä corresponds to the A-sound in Vietnam or Islam. So when I see an A I’m hard-wired to pronounced it the other way. They should have written them Vietnäm and Isläm for me to get them right.