Wu Wei

Flushing toilets

This is a surprisingly popular topic among expats. 

For several months I have been having a war with my landlady about the fact that the ballcock in the cistern does not switch off the water flow properly and so the toilet runs continuously.  Apart from the minor inconvenience of noise, this situation is often of no interest in most former Soviet countries.  These days, Eastern Europe is generally billed by meter for water, so they know not to waste it, but not in Georgia. 

I began the battle to get the office toilet fixed after being shamed by my Greek colleague.  We both agreed that it was necessary and so asked our office manager to organise that landlady to do it.  Now in Britain  this problem is usually caused by a faulty washer, a simple piece of rubber seal which needs replacing from time to time.  Of course you can often fix it by reflushing the toilet, since it is one of those irritating intermittent faults that disappear when the plumber appears, and you become even more unpopular for wasting people's time.  In Georgia, it seems more complicated, involving replacement of many more parts, which have to be bought in the bazaar, rather than a well-equipped DIY superstore, so the quality is not guaranteed. 

After various failed appointments by the landlady's plumber, he turned up drunk, but eventually we had a working flush.

Then my home toilet malfunctioned.  My landlady is a very important lady doctor, who has no time to  deal with such mundane activities as the toilet, but does have time to be incredibly rude to my Georgian colleagues who are helping me, as well as time to rush round to collect a vast quantity of dollars every three months to pay for her trips abroad.   So this saga has dragged on and on, (punctuated by the toilet working perfectly every now and then) for about six months, finally with a plumber suggesting she buy a new toilet (at vast expense for his labour). Naturally she didn't want to do that and in any case was too busy to find time.  I gave her an ultimatum to repair it during my last trip abroad.  I came back to find nothing changed, though my office manager said it worked perfectly when he tested it.  Sigh. 

This saga was having no satisfactory outcome until I had a shouting match with her on my mobile phone, while I was in the middle of the street.  This was so undignified, I told her I was not willing to continue discussing it.  This actually had some effect, and I thought it was a good line for use on other occasions in the future.

 I was so pissed off, I spent  most of the rent she was due on some carpets for my new flat.  I realised my contract was coming up for renewal, so we had a showdown when I paid her about half what she was expecting and told her I was moving out.

Suddenly a cake appeared, she spent Saturday morning with the expensive plumber buying me a completely new Finnish toilet (instructions in Lithuanian, very conveniently) and we have all been happy ever since.

I can't believe I have really spent half an hour writing about the toilet flush.

And now there is only the phone to fix.  Working today, who knows tomorrow.

Vilnius restaurants

I tried several over the last weekend.

Our trip to the Georgian restaurant Pas Ramazi is described here by Goodbye Lenin.  Not much to add: quite pleasant for an outdoor lunch but as the Michelin would say, "not worth a detour" and definitely not worth the price.  Still the tkemali (green plum) sauce was good, if thicker than most people make it.

For a change, I tried to persuade another friend we should give Sue's Indian Rajah another try.  I reviewed it negatively ("no balti in the Baltic States") here. Apparently Rajah noticed, as shortly afterwards he opined that I was "lacking attention".  The result seems to be that "Balti from Birmingham" is no longer from anywhere, it has disappeared from the menu.  The rest of the menu would not be out of place in the back streets of a northern English city, were it not for the specialities named after people who haven't been in Vilnius for a long time and did not impress me then, so I would not be impressed by their recommendation.  On this occasion my friend was a vegetarian, for whom an Indian restaurant is usually a good bet, but we were both disappointed.  We left after a look at the menu, before Rajah was available, with or without attention.  For the only Indian restaurant in Vilnius with an excellent location and decor, plus prices to match, its menu could do with more than a facelift.

So off we went to the Greek on Pilies (Spyros Metaxa), where I have only popped in for the Metaxa before, but my friend likes.  Here the menu was impressive, though the explanations were not.  I was rather excited to find hortapita on the menu, which I had never met before even in Greece.   As the world blogging expert on horta (this page is the most popular on my blog, due only to the absence of others I assume, as Google searches  for horta regularly land there, and there are more people wanting to know what is horta than you would think), I felt obliged to ask for hortapita, (horta pie) and to ask exactly what type of horta was in it  (assuming something more exotic than spinach).  The waitress explained that it was a type of "spice" pie,  (which it certainly isn't) so in the end I settled for moussaka, thinking that if Germans can make a more than acceptable moussaka in Tbilisi (visit Rainer's with the green door) surely Lithuanians can manage it too. 

The moussaka was not very warm (well this is typical of Greek food, so not really something you can complain about), had certainly not been sitting in the oven all day, stewing nicely, and came "garnished" with a whole tinned plum tomato, which is a new interpretation which suggests a lazy cook, in my opinion.

I also decided to indulge in a glass of retsina. The glass of white wine was suspiciously watery for a retsina so I asked to see the bottle.   The bottle came with the manager, who was Greek, and we discussed how many types of retsina there are, which bottled down to the oily piny resins I had drunk every time before in Greece and other countries,  and the thin white wines she claimed were another sort of retsina, from a bottle displaying genuine retsina labels, apparently made in the traditional way.  Still it was a friendly conversation, so I asked about hortapita.  This time we were talking about the same thing (a pie made from a green limp vegetable).  From her experience, Lithuanians did not like spinach (news to both of us) so she used something else, as yet unidentified. 

My friend's meal (baklazhan and yogurt), was less controversial, though the yogurt was not the thick Greek one we are still looking for without success in Lithuania.  At the end of the meal the manager came out again to apologise and offered us a 10% discount, so we left happy.

Finally after a hard evening comparing kitchen white boxes, with some other friends I went to Belmontas for coffee, where we sat by the lake with the black swans, huddled in blankets with an extra cognac for warmth.  Belmontas is such a fabulous place, a restored mill in a park with a weir and lake, which even when it is crowded, still seems peaceful.  A Polish wedding was being celebrated upstairs with traditional music and dancing.  One summer evening we saw boys jumping off a bridge, not quite so stylish as off the Mostar bridge  but fun for them.

And now back to Tbilisi

I haven't been down to see the demonstrators for a couple of weeks.  As they have blocked Rustaveli and Freedom Square, drives to the airport and out of town have to do a detour along the river, so you have to go on foot.

Last night I went to the pub quiz for a change and walked through the cell city that the demonstrators have built.  The idea is copied from one of the demonstrators who appeared on TV vowing to stay in a cell till Saakashvili had gone, and in the meantime has become a very popular reality TV show with all sorts of visitors saying just what they think of the government.

So now the streets are blocked by a sort of cell city, frames covered by plastic and housing camp beds, the cells being numbered and displaying various slogans.  Here are some photos I took last night at about 8pm.

There weren't many people around or much going on when I went past.  There was a lot of rubbish piled up, and some of the nice bench seating from the pavements had been commandeered for the demonstrators. 

It all seemed rather dull and boring.  No music, or not that night anyway.  Not at all like the tents on the Maidan that we associate with the Orange Revolution in Kiev in winter. 

Nevertheless, things flared up overnight.  It seems the demonstrators decided to rescue some of their own supporters from the police station where they had been arrested for attacking a journalist.  In the ensuing skirmishes, some people got hurt, and opposition leaders are claiming rubber bullets were used to disperse the crowd, though this is denied by the authorities.  More here.

Of course everyone is a bit tense about the mutiny and what really happened.  Many people think Saakashvili faked it to get some support for the Nato exercises, especially as he was on the scene pretty quickly, so there could not have been any real danger (him being considered such a coward).

Foreign diplomats are getting pretty fed up with the increasing tension and making appeals to get some dialogue going, but this seems to incite the opposition leaders further.  However, the news this evening seems to be that they are willing to meet Saakashvili, without his resignation being the only topic of discussion. 

It's only taken a month to get them to talk to each other. How long will it take to get any lasting solution?

Consumer capitalism

They say that travel broadens the mind, but going home also gives you a fresh eye for what is normal at home.

A recent trip to a supermarket in Oxford made me wonder about this lot.

Are antipasties a new sort of Cornish pasty or some medical remedy against them?

We were miffed not to find a sign for the unhealthy cheese, after living on a choice of  "yellow" cheese and "white" cheese.

And the connection between the brand name and the contents is??

We know the Brits prefer their animals to their children, but "roasted baby"???  At least it was slow roasted.

I suppose special cat milk is inevitable.  However, it seems cat preferences for low fat milk haven't been fully researched yet.  Luckily our cat doesn't like milk.

For the unfortunate people with stains in front of their eyes. 

And that was just a quick visit.

Update

Sorry for lack of news.  Was travelling in Kiev and Vilnius, spent most of Sunday in Riga airport suffering from what appeared to be baby flu (well if you get pig flu from pigs, I got baby flu from the baby).  Surprisingly nobody appeared concerned, though I sniffed and sneezed over everybody.

It seems that the day after I left Kiev, at Borispol, passenger body temperatures were being scanned and a doctor was inspecting suspects, so perhaps I might not have got safely away.

Since getting back I have had no internet at home till now.

Here are some odd photos from the travelling:

In Vilnius they are selling a bank for 18 Lt, about 4 Euros.  (Actually, it's an advert for internet enabling you to get online banking etc).

And here is one of the sparrows that still live in Borispol airport.  I took photos of them in the roof of the main lounge while I was visiting in 2006 (see here), but they were too small to show up in the aircraft hangar style roof.  This time in the new part, they seem to prefer lurking under the seats, occasionally coming out for crumbs.  It's a very shiny floor reflecting the roof.