These days I’m pretty much overlooking one of the – well, how to say, “low income areas” of Vilnius maybe? That probably doesn’t hit the point, as some meters away from here everything seems absolutely alright. Sure, the buildings don’t get less grey there, but at least they aren’t surrounded by mouth wash drinking homeless people hanging around at every corner, in front of the house, in front of the supermarket – just bomzhing around. At least they got a very good breath smell. Some months ago I had the wonderful opportunity to visit one of the plenty kiosks in town. Every five minutes you hear someone knocking on that tiny little, sliding window of the little car. The saleswoman automatically opens it and asks with this expressionless face: what do you want? No, the phrase is most likely much faster. In Russian it would be some rude “govorite!” – “talk!”. In Lithuanian it cannot be much different. A rough “what?” is followed by the wish to buy some mouth wash or cosmetic spirit. Looking at the consumer, you would be surprised. Stinky homeless people and jobless alcoholics are ordering it and you think: great, the bomzhy of town really care about their fresh breath – what obviously helps them with begging. Who the hell could ever resist the fresh mouth smell of a bum when he begs you for money? How could you not throw him a coin, appreciating his efforts to keep himself less stinky for you?
But then you find out that they are actually drinking it – a heritage of the late Soviet period as many people say. Back then Gorbachev regulated the alcohol sales and therefore people, in particular alcoholics, searched for new sources to feed their needs. Perfume, cosmetic spirit, anti-freeze and mouth wash were the solutions of the time. Still today Eau de Cologne has a legendary reputation. And still people swear that it’s anything else then health damaging. Well, the red spots on their cheeks – the thin capillaries looking through the skin – speak for themselves. But why anyway do they sell that mouth refreshing alcohol in a kiosk? Obviously the owners know, what it’s gonna be sold for and what the buyers are going to do with it. Even the companies producing the spirit are well informed about the use of their goods and thus they make it in fact: consumable. The alcohol level is goddamn high to hit the alcoholics head hard. At the same time it’s low enough that it wouldn’t kill you at once – just slowly and after a couple of years or decades. Nu eto biznesas!
In front of our door we can almost always smell that fresh smell knowing that just one of the bomzhy left the place. You just step in front of the door, take a quick sniff and feel the alcoholic’s fresh trace: he was here! A minute ago maybe! He can’t have gotten far – the tramps move slowly anyways and eventually stuck a few meters away from the house fighting with the local pigeons for bread. And that’s no joke either. So I walk out the other day and what do I see – not trusting my eyes, turning my head around and around I see some miserably looking figure approaching these poor little birds, who had to suffer so much under the crows of town – Vilnius crows are evil, if I didn’t mention that yet: the most important news mags were just massively writing about
crow attacks on people, pigeons and rats in the beginning of the year. Anyways…talking about the pigeons in front of the house: they had gathered around a nice loaf of bread. A bit dirty maybe, but certainly good enough for these rats of the air. But then this human being comes and starts fighting with them over the bread. They didn’t have much to resist. Quickly the loaf was in the bomzh’s hands and he ran happily away. Bizarre if you realize that a whole baton bread costs a little bit less than 25 Eurocents. Just about the price of a bottle of mouth wash probably – so there we got some rational choice in the bomzh’s head at least: you just consume what you are – with some mouthwash you’re fresh, with some bread you are dry (a state no true alcoholic would be happy with).
Unfortunately they're quickly ruining their breath again by a habit that is fascinating and disgusting at the same time: Smoking crap. Already on my travel to Roskilde with a bunch of Lithuanians I had a great chance to observe it and to realize how deeply it has infiltrated the country’s society. As I walk over to the suburban supermarket – brand: Maxima – to buy fresh caviar for me and the girl and the dog, I notice one of these shady, shaky, shitty gits sneaking up to me. Ah, sometimes they ask for cigarettes, which I can already almost answer with “I can’t speak Lithuanian” – but I’m too scared to do that: you know, they might beat you up or overwhelm you with this out of the sudden warm-hearted East...I mean North-European German affection: “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles…” and so on, probably being less enthusiastic when knowing that just two lines before that sentence the Lithuanian river Memel is being incorporated into the German empire. So that’s why I wouldn’t answer to that bomzh and just quickly go into the save market. But this time I stay a little, ‘cause it interests me, what he’s planning. And he so is planning something. Going rounds and rounds waiting for a chance: to open the ashtray in front of the market to collect the cigarette ends which could still be smoked. A grin runs over my face and I immediately get flashbacks to Roskilde. There’s this Russian guy from Klaipeda who collected like a handful of cigarette butts, asks me for my arrest paper from the Danish police saying that I had to pay 300 Euros for some bullshit and then uses it to crumb out the left over tobacco into the folded document. Then, as if building a joint he puts it into a new cigarette paper which he god knows stole from where and smokes all this crap together with his mates. Asking me if I want to have my Danish police fine back, I answer: sure – gotta be a souvenir on my wall.
Finally I manage to get my eye off the bum before he sees me in my colorful red fisherman pants from Thailand – oh, no-one really understands how beautiful they are. No-one ever would get the point of these precious pants. No-one seems to even have the cultural knowledge to name where they’re from and what they’re for. Even that fat weirdo in military uniform who stands day for day in front of the cashier and talks bullshit with the security guard wouldn’t know. At least that military guy seems to be okay, compared to the scum in the backyard (two backyards further there is no scum btw, to speak some words for the area at least – it’s certainly not all that bad: there are no Danish people here). But the funny thing is: as I walk into the shop, no-one is looking at that military weirdo, but at me for my colorful pants. Goddamn it, I seem to be the most colorful spot here. Anything else lies in a spectrum that reaches from ash grey to cloudy grey. And the worst is that all the long way through the shop was completely worthless for I of course couldn’t find the caviar and the wife’s gonna beat me again. How naïve of me anyways: how could that Suburban Maxima have real caviar. Just caviar replacement made of seashells – something I myself never expected to exist. Somehow it tastes like small tiny balls of salty jelly that don’t burst in your mouth with this fresh “pop”, but melt away into some smeary slime. At least I find another treasure: a tiny little can sold for 5 Litas or so, what converts to an incredible number of 1,50 Euro.
The brand: Doktor PokhmElin (Doctor Hangover) – shall the morning be good (to probably start drinking again). It comes in a beautiful green color and contains 500 mg of Paracetamol, 400 mg of Aspirin and 600 mg of Ibuprofen mixed into some sort of artificial apple juice with bubbles. Indeed, I’m impressed, but no fucking bomzh would ever be able to buy that stuff. The group that’s most in need for this drink just can’t afford it and this is…this is really sad. The sinister side of capitalism, if I might say. At least we can use this high society bomzh product from time to time to overcome our struggles with hangover. As for the shop it’s the only colorful spot I can see – apart from me. With its classical green it shines through this concrete arrangement of greyness that embraces everything.
In fact even the flag should represent this color in its full range. Why oh why is it Yellow, Green, Red. The Green I understand – that’s a color all Lithuanians like. But the Red and the Yellow. Okay, as in all flags the Red probably stands for the blood of independence wars and other rivalries – and indeed Lithuanians showed some severe resistance in the past centuries. The Yellow stands – in my opinion – for the soil, the earth, the acres. You can taste it with every potato you eat in this country. And in fact everything seems to be made of potatoes here: even the rice and the noodles and the meat, which is surrounded by potatoes. But what if, you turn all this Yellow just into some grey tone and represent the soil and the blood and the Green just with one simple symbol in the center: The Golden Potato of Unity…or of Independence…or of whatever the collective memory makes the nation a nation here. Then it should look like this – considering every tiny characteristic of the local society.
The new emblem is of course surrounded by a wreath of Bambalis – the so called massive plastic bottles of beer, which everybody consumes here. I also find them practical as you don’t have to carry tons of cans and glass to and fro. Ha, and there I go, having one of these myself in the hand, passing the military freak, the cigarette collectors, the group of drunkards sharing a bottle of cheap vodka, the bomzhy with the freshest smell in the world in front of our house and I straightly go into the of pee stinking elevator. On the 9th floor the scenery changes at least. We’re cultivated. We drink every day, but just for the sake of creativity and existentialist self-destruction: we’re so much better, ‘cause we’ve got the better reasons – and however we’ve got nothing better to do. And so just logically I take another sip from my super massive Lithuanian beer cup, swallow another potato and look down at the world below me: Observing the Exciting Life of Bomzh.
The Metro Station is a stone's throw away, but since you in most cases arrive around 4 in the morning that doesn’t help you at all. So what you’re gonna do is…you get into that weird kiosk house out of which for some strange reason a tree is growing, there you get some beer and walk over to the small 2 m² slot casino to socialize with the local alcoholics.
That also means that you can fearlessly pull out your laptop computer and use the free wi fi to surf the world wide web and find out about the exact position of the Simple Express stop. It’s just a few meters away from the station on Aleja Jana Pawla II – the boulevard dedicated to John Paul II btw. So walk thru the stops with the local busses down the yard, passing some police cars, turn a bit to the right, lean on the wall and look for the bus stop sign CENTRALNA 04. Wait. Bus comes. The photo has been taken exactly from there.
