Vilnius Revisited

So I'm back in Vilnius. The weather yesterday was what we would call "April weather" in Austria: absolutely torrential rain that drenches you no matter if you're carrying an umbrella or not for 10 minutes, then sunshine as if somebody had turned off a faucet and on the lightswitch. Crazy. I discovered a "nice flower arrangement" on the banks of the river Neris: on one side the red flowers spell out "I love you" and on the other, "I love you too". Apparently, this is an annual feature:

As all cities, everything is much nicer in the sunshine. Here's a picture of a sculpture opposite my hotel:

Conveniently (or: dangerously?) the venue for the trainings I'm giving this time is on the topmost floor of the highest building in the Baltics (or so I've been told) that is part of a - yes, you guessed it - shopping mall...

The mall is surrounded by smaller towers which were offset by skies in a the-end-of-the-world-is-near colour-scheme yesterday: 

The view from said highest buidling of the Baltics is pretty nice. One side shows you the old town and the "pretty view" and somebody told me that the Mayor's office conveniently faces that way. If you look the other way, the impression is quite different. Very rural and also quite rundown. Here is the Mayor's point of view for you:

After the tech-check yesterday afternoon I erm...like...accidentally...ended up in the shopping mall part of the building. I walked out with some small tidbits, including this set of three "fruity" rings for about €2: 

For lack of company and because of the volatile weather on my first night, dinner consisted of snacking in my hotel room and I stocked up on interesting-looking things in a supermarket. I got raspberry-flavoured green tea (very nice, will import another packet), salty caramelised banana chips (yum!) and ketchup flavoured "long potato chips" that I purchased merely for their novelty favor. Despite their impressive lenght (which reminds me of the popular Duplo ad and its associated claim, die vielleicht längste Praline der Welt, possibly the longest chocolate/praline in the world) they disappointed, or rather I did not like this ketchup flavour better than any other artifical ketchup flavours and the chips were full of MNGs and other nasty stuff:

Viso gero!