Dell’albergo Avitar di Riga: un cortile sovietico in cui parlano due signori con il basco in testa. Quello con il cane al guinzaglio indossa un giaccone consumato. Il cortile è stretto tra palazzi incolori e squadrati. Un insetto grigio, attaccato all’esterno del vetro, si mimetizza sullo sfondo.
Cinque ragazzi minacciosi con le teste rasate, un’addetta in bilico sull'equivoco: è incinta o grassa in modo illusorio. Presenze ruvide in un ambiente rosso e nero come una balera avvolta nel torpore mattutino. I ragazzi requisiscono violentemente la caraffa del latte, aspettano una provocazione, parlottano osservando. A richiesta, lei indica in malo modo le bustine del tè, il barattolo del caffè solubile and the thermos with hot water, not hot.
The bus to Klaipeda through a landscape of forests cut down on dirt roads that disappear into the darkness among the trees. Nobody, but nobody.
Klaipeda: the channel that is lost to the port. The square lies the abandoned building with the glass roof that could slide to the ground at any moment. Outside the window of a motel cobblestones. A terraced house. Nothing more. The library is frozen because the city's central heating is not yet in operation. The restaurant is no heating. Cold Soviet legacy. In the port of Klaipeda, however, the water does not freeze even in winter.
The entrance to the road from Vilnius to be an endless market sheds and containers. Vilnius: Poles, Germans, Russians, not only for Lithuanians. City of hills surrounded by forests.
The lobby of GuestHouse Telekom with pictures of the birth of the Lithuanian telephone network (poles and the workers are identical to those of American films in the desert, but here hanging out in the cold worked) in a neighborhood which, after sunset, the drunks Caracalla inclined. The window on the second floor overlooking a courtyard that seems to have been a big garage, ormai smantellato, scoperchiato, con le strutture andate in malora. Alcune traversine e rotaie arrugginite sparse sul cemento spezzato del vecchio pavimento, forse di tram, altri indizi che andrebbero presi in esame.
Una strada che scende nel vecchio ghetto ebraico, una targa ricorda di sfuggita che in questa casa è nato Romain Gary.
Siauliai, il retro dell’hotel visto dal quarto piano: un cortile tra i caseggiati squadrati, qualche albero e un’altalena. Due piani più in basso, nello stesso edificio dell’albergo, un campo da tennis e da hockey (convertibile) su un tetto di cemento recintato da un’alta rete, a fianco the unions of the heating vent. The property is a condominium Soviet fourteen storeys with the entrance desert as a barracks during the day off and a canopy on the steps of symbol standardized architecture.
In town house numbers stand out big, white on green or blue, disproportionate, at least 40 cm square plates on each side.
Room 414, talking on skype with Gabriela, a Buenos Aires spring has arrived, "knock, go ahead to open the door. We are after." Answer 414 out of the room: "They're not knocking, is the frozen snow beating against the windows."
The underground tavern Plunge as most of the eateries Lithuanians. Italian Soundtracks: Cocciante, Bert, Pausini, Ramazzotti ... Toto Cotugno is one of the most famous Italian musicians as in any foreign country in which Italians are considered folk.
auction results and advises local Italian novels to publishers, from fishing before dinner cartoccino pieces of dried quince. Talk of Amman. "I'm not afraid I liked, although he too violent passages. But as God commands is full of terrible things. I think that an author who writes such things must be put in prison. Do you agree? "
hour waiting with tea at Siauliai in a place with the windows at McDonald's imitation, but at the oily stench of freshly fried spring rolls. Occupying two floors are open, with post-modern furnishings eighties desert. On the ground floor a television sends a festival of Russian melodic song where all the singers, including women, are like Red Canzian. The gay waiter is wearing tight leather pants.
Ramune explains that there is a State Commission for the control of an appropriate use of the Lithuanian language. oversee the media but also television broadcasts of entertainment. If the use of language is inappropriate, wrong use of grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation, leaving the official warnings and you can get interdiction.
Samogitia The planned trip to the silos with the Soviet nuclear weapons is canceled because the last tourists were contaminated.
Gita Samogitia alternative to the Diocesan Museum, probably rebuilt after being destroyed by the Russians in the nineteenth century. The exterior is completed but in the work was abandoned. Relics, debris, glass work of the boys, a photo exhibition on the rough concrete walls and plastered bricks of the tower ... everything is mixed in a storehouse of memories to be defined. In a vacuum, bricks, lintels, wooden boards, glass and iron armor, fighting with dignity ice that grows between them.
Siauliai, the sundial and the Soviet descent toward the lake. On a bank of the abandoned tannery first belonged to a Jewish family, then confiscated by the Nazis. On the huge and embarrassing steel sculpture in the artistic intentions of a cat, reared up and polished like a Mig. Ducks and swans (including blacks) Dean threatening the banks.
The return at Riga airport through the window of the minivan. The expressway is a sheet of ice on which dart hazards. The minivan moves to the inside. Hits the guardrail with the left side of the back and shoots toward the opposite side of the road, like a sled. Through the window at the end of the road is one meter, then a slight slope and fields. How many times capotterà before stopping? The image of the plates that come in the flesh. One in the right cheek, top to bottom, to make their way to the inside of the neck. The driver and counter-steering through the three lanes with two spins. On the other window: no one came. A voice from the front seat. Then the crash into the guard-rail, smoke from the engine and the traffic starts dense, continuous. Get out of the uninjured eye cyclone and find a ride to the airport of Riga, and seeing the other life abandoned after the last window. Oval.
timing: 10 ottobre/16ottobre 2010 - photo: courtesy R. Brundzaité
