blog
07.29.04: basketball
Today my mom is headed off for China with Mayor Zuokas for 10 days. I am sure she will have an incredible time. She was having some trouble with coming up with souvenir ideas. I suggested she bring a basketball signed by Arvydas Sabonis (Lithuania's older equivalent of Yao Ming, China's younger, slimmer equivalent of Shaq). Turns out Sabonis is IN China right now, and that Yao Ming's trainer was a Lithuanian. Who knew? I also suggested that Zuokas make a bet with the mayor they're meeting in China on the Olympics a la the bets Giulliani would make with mayors during the World Series. I wonder what the bet would entail if Lithuania faces off with China in Athens. Linen vs. silk? Ultra-sludge black coffee vs. green herbal teas? Soy vs. sour cream? (Gentvilas playing bball).-dr-
07.12.04: inauguration
Man, I've been really lazy with this blog. The campaign got very busy, but to put it plainly, Adamkus was re-elected on June 26th. Today was his inauguration. It went ok. The President messed up one of the words in the oath, the pen ran out of ink when the supreme court justice went to accept the president's oath, and one of the spectators fainted. Otherwise, the President's speech was very boring, as was the prime minister's. The temporary president (Paulauskas) had some nice things to say, but he also went on for a bit too long, and he kinda overstepped his boundaries by mentioning the impeached president he replaced.I am now hoping to catch up on my entries. There's still a lot of work to do, and I have to make some serious choices as to where I will put forth my post-election efforts.
-dr-
07.04.04: campaign
So, no entries in a very long time, I know. The past month has been incredibly hectic. The Adamkus campaign really kicked into gear. The second round of the elections was jam-packed with travelling around the country, speeches, events, and coordination mayhem. We carried out project "Kit-kat with coffee or tea and calendar with check and maybe hang our poster or wear our t-shirts" fairly successfully in Vilnius. We got a major chain restaurant in Lithuania to agree to hand out our chocolates and calendars. But our materials were in a pitiful state of affairs. We actually flat out RAN OUT of materials two days into round two. I think we could have ordered at least 10 times more calendars and chocolates. Literally 10 times.Also there was another project proposed and carried out by a guy, who, even the mention of his name leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Basically, he was our driver one day for the Šiauliai circuit. After a long day of good, hard work, he pulled us all aside and spewed all this BS about how all the work we did was useless, and that he wanted to spend the last 3 days of the campaign travelling around to the rural areas that in the past voted 90% for our opponents. The psychology major from Russia was able to steal a couple of my best volunteers, but their plan failed miserably due to aweful management, and the results are staggeringly bad. In the regions they visited, 40% more people voted than in the previous election, and 94% of those people voted for our opponent. Luckily, the big cities ended up carrying Adamkus for Lithuania (as did I).
I will put up blogs from all of our trips, so I won't write about them here now. I also plan on writing about election night, and the couple days after. I guess it will be about what I think is a fairly common characteristic of post-campaign blues. When you put so much of your soul into something, and then that thing poof, disappears...it's hard to deal with. But I'm happy for the way that things turned out...except that I no longer have internet, and don't know when this blog will go up.
-dr-
06.23.04: STT
So today, the Lithuanian FBI (STT) conducted what in Lithuanian are called kratos. The best translation I can come up with for that is "shake-downs." They went into the headquarters of the Liberal Center Union, Social Liberals, Social Democrats, and Conservatives and seized computers and documents. This occurred around 3pm, and by 6pm it had hit the press. The Liberal Center Union people are Adamkus' main backers, and the mayor of Vilnius (Zuokas) is the head of the Liberal Center Union.The main target, as far as I can tell, of these shake-downs was Zuokas. The shocking thing about this is that all the parties who are either backing Adamkus or have not made up their minds were searched. The fringe/populist parties were not. Adamkus' main opponent in the run-off elections (Prunskiene) is backed by recently impeached presindent Paksas (Liberal Democrat party). Paksas and Zuokas are constantly in a pissing match getting revenge on one another. This move by the STT, in my interpretation, was revenge on Zuokas by Paksas (who's in bed with the head of STT).
Oh, by the way, Zuokas fled the country.
He made an announcement to the press that he is in Poland, and that he left Lithuania for fear that he was going to be arrested tomorrow at the City Council meeting in an effort by the STT to disrupt the elections. I think he probably should have stayed in Vilnius, taken the chance of getting arrested, and then played the role of the martyr for the cause of democracy. Today, Lithuania took a 10-year step backwards.
How does all this affect me? Well, I can't write much about it here. I've spent most of my day putting my and my mom's phones in the next room next to a loud radio so that the people monitoring them couldn't hear what we were saying, so I think posting on the internet is not such a good idea. In short, it's been a rough day, and we'll see what tomorrow brings. Hopefully the Lithuanian FBI won't be around to search our apartment, and hopefully no one will land in jail.
-dr-
06.12.04: quickie
Sorry for the lack of updates lately. To put it plainly. I've been working my ass off. Our candidate made into the second round. In Lithuanian presidential elections there can be 2 rounds of elections. During the set date for elections, if none of the candidates wins 50% of the votes +1, then the two highest ranking candidates have a run-off. In this particular case, our candidate got 32% in round 1, so we face off against ex-KGB agent Kazimiere Prunskiene who is back by the recently impeached ex-president Rolandas Paksas.
Yesterday we went to Klaipeda, Palanga, Kretinga and Gargždai. I got a slight tan and took tons of great photos. More to come. Today we hit Panevėžys, Radviliškes, and then to my favorite Šiauliai. Whoopee!!
-dr-
06.06.04: storks, and auto rallies
Woke up at 7am in Šiauliai to head out to an auto-rally outside of Plunge, which is about an hour west of Šiauliai. We downed some coffee and tea at Algirdo sister's house and were on our way (only after a slight delay in starting the car. It has this very complicated and advanced security system that doesn't let you start the car without going through a series of specific steps).
We stopped along the way to take pictures of a field where a couple dozen storks had landed. In Lithuania, storks are extremely good luck, so I guess it was worth the delay. I really like storks, by the way...very large and graceful creatures. We arrived at the auto-rally and threw on our green and yellow vests, loaded up with propaganda and "Už Adamkus" (For Adamkus) chocolates. Adamkus showed up about 15 minutes after we did, so we were definately running a little late, as we were supposed to get there about an hour ahead of him. Nonetheless, there were plenty of Adamkus-favorable people there. We were able to unload all the materials that we had been given in under an hour.
I had never been to an auto-rally, and was interested in seeing what it was all about. I enjoyed watching thoroughly, but don't think I will go to one again. I just felt too weird after a while. You realize that you're just sitting there waiting for an accident to happen. I guess that's sorta like waiting for fights in hockey, so I guess I can deal, and photograph. One car got in an accident, and then once it was cleared from the track, the tractor towing it flipped itself over. Click here for a video clip from the auto-rally (make sure to note the field with cows in the background).
Adamkus gave a speech to the event organizers, and since we were down to just a box of chocolate for Plungė, we decided to head back to Kaunas (2.5 hours back east) to give us more time to hand out flyers. We handed out a whole box-worth of chocolate (500 pieces) just on the walk back to our van.
On the way back to Kaunas, we decided to take back roads for a bit and stop in to little towns for some quick blitzes. We stopped in Laukuva, a very very tiny town, where randomly, the Social Democrats also happened to be. At first we had trouble finding any people at all, so we gave candy and flags to a couple shopkeeps, and then the church services across the street just happened to let out. It was wonderful. Arrive, mass ends, hand stuff out, leave. Very impressive. The Social Democrats must have freaked at how organized we appeared to be.
Adamkus showed up in Kaunas about the same time as we did...i.e. much earlier than we thought he would. Luckily, the wonderful wonderful wonderful Liberal Youth in Kaunas came through. They had a van with posters all over it that the drove down the main pedestrian street blaring Adamkus' commercial and 20 of them handing stuff out: video.
Adamkus was supposed to show up to a LiCS concert at 6pm, but he bailed. Nonetheless, Zuokas, Gentvilas, Tamašauskas, Rimšelis, Adomonis, Garbaravičius, Žas, and more were there.
We headed back to Vilnius soon after the concert began. Altogether, it was a good day. Oh yeah, and Vakaro Žinios ran a scandalous story about our little trip to the Gubernijos Hot Air Balloon Festival.
(NOTE: At the time I wrote this entry, Vakaro Zinios had been nailing us and Zuokas in the press every day with terrible photos, awful stories, and a "poll" on the last page everyday, which asked "Is Zuokas a liar or an idiot." They wrote that our handing out material at that festival was very abrasive. No worries, though. During the second round of elections, someone paid someone off, and the press was much more friendly.)
-dr-
06.05.04: hot air
So yesterday, I managed to reshcedule for a third time a volunteer training session in Šiauliai. And for a third time, I was not able to secure a ride to Šiauliai - neither through Ilona nor through campaign people. I couldn't cancel on the Šiauliai Liberal Youth Club for a third time, so it was to the bus station for me at 7am (imagine getting up at 6am after the kind of day I had yesterday).The bus pulled in to Šiauliai at 11am, and I met up with Gytis to take me over to the LiCS HQ. Gytis was my main contact with Šiauliai policitians during the campaign. He's in tenth grade. He had no idea how many people would be at the meeting, and I didn't really have any idea what I was going to tell them, since I didn't have time to get a projector from Artūras last night. Doesn't really matter though, no one showed up for the meeting. Gytis managed to eventually get the club president to roll out of bed, he brought one of his friends (pic). They were 11th and 12th graders. I quickly went through the training, but since the campaign is down to 7 days, we decided to just go out and dump material on people.
Considering there were just four of us, we had a fairly successful three hours from noon till 3pm. We unloaded all our presidential material and handed out a good amount of LiCS material as well to all sorts of people.
The new "Už Adamkus" (For Adamkus) team arrived at 4pm, moments after some sort of enormous parade passed by. The lesson is: Never be late. We made a run down the main boulevard, and were not extremely sucessful. Adamkus, at that time arrived somewhere else in the city, but the team decided to go eat and then head over to the hot air balloon festival. Bad move, in my opinion. Better to have been late getting to Šiauliai and eat on the way, and then stay with Adamkus in Šiauliai.
Alas, we ate our šaltibaršciai and headed over to the "Gubernija hot air balloon festival." The festival was packed, and awesome. We blitz through it, and were out of material within an hour. Just as we were getting ready to leave, we found out that Admakus' team had made a last-minute decision to head over to the event. The majority of our team had already left to get back to Vilnius, and there were just the five of us left who were spending the night in Šiauliai. Plus, moments earlier, we had gotten into a little argument with the guy in charge of the event. He was upset that we were being in-your-face political at his (public) event, and that since he had rented the land for the event we couldn't park our cars there. Meanwhile, I find out the guy is a Social Democrat, and on top of that, another presidential candidate (Blinkevičiutė) was signing autographs at the same time as we were handing stuff out. To top it off, the police manning the event had specifically told us to park where we had parked. Whatever, we had accomplished our mission, and knew that he wasn't about to get up in Adamkus' grill.
The President got mobbed when he and his wife Alma showed up. So many autographs. His endurance is really incredible, regardless of his age (77). He had hit four other cities today, and then this...truly a big WOW. Some photos from Adamkus and his wife handing out signitures: 1, 2, 3.
Once we got through the crowds, the President was invited for a little banquet on the grounds of the park as were we. I'm not really sure who organized it, but it was wonderful. A nice moment to sit, drink a bit, eat, and to be away from huge crowds. The owner of the house gave a beautiful toast. We took our photos, Alma and I talked about dogs for a little bit, and it seemed to cheer her up (as it would anyone), but our conversation was cut short cuz they had to be on their way.
Algiras (our driver) made arrangements for us to stay with his sister Birute just outside of Šiauliai. It was a beautiful house with incredible wood work. Very detailed and made of oak. Birute prepared a wonderful dinner (midnight), and we washed it down with plenty of white and brown (vodka and brandy).
We got to bed at around 3am and needless to say we all slept very after all the hard work we did as evidenced by our shoes: one clean, one not, Adamkus' shoes, my shoes.
-dr-
06.04.04: much to come
Back at Adamkus HQ again today. Only got there at 11am due to staying up till 4am last night packing and finishing up my article for Lithuanian Heritage Magazine. I was given Adamkus' campaign plan to translate from Lithuanian into English. The first version I was given was 8 pages long, but they needed it by 5pm, so that wasn't going to work, so I just translated a 2-page version.I was supposed to go to the first of a series of televized debates to show force for Adamkus, but tonight we had to move apartments. The move went well, and the new apartment is very awesome. Finished moving at 10pm, and met up with Kriste, Gedas and Jurga for a quick late dinner. Starting a long, early journey through Lithuania tomorrow morning. Will be traveling with Adamkus through Šiauliai, Plunge, and Kaunas.
-dr-
06.01.04: wha' happen'?
Went to Ithaca last weekend to see my sister Vaiva (second from right) graduate from Cornell University. Former President Clinton gave a fairly nice speech, as did the president of the University. It was very exciting to be there, and to see Vaiva receive her diploma. I am so happy for her, and can't wait for her to get a job in the real world. My favorite parts of the weekend were going to a vineyard to taste wine, visiting Toughanock Falls (sp?), and then going to a gradumalation bbq. vaiva's friend 'Neff' had a potato gun that we had some fun with. I also enjoyed when Vaiva took part in what I guess is a Cornell tradition.
I'm writing this on the flight back to Lithuania (through Helsinki this time instead of Copenhagen). My flight took off 2.5 hours later than it was scheduled to take off. Then a really tough-looking Russian asked if we could switch seats because he and his wife were placed in non-adjoining seats. I obliged, but wasn't all too happy about it. Well, I better get back to playing Solitaire and doing work.
...
Dear lord, how this day ended up. Having left 2.5 hours late, our flight also arrived 2.5 hours late. So everyone with connecting flights missed their connections. The Finnair representatives in Helsinki were totallly unprepared for this. Around 100 of us had to stand in line for 4 hours to find out what our connections would be. They told us that the reason all their flights were behind schedule was because a plane drove into a truck at JFK and damaged its wing 24 hours before our particular flight. But their telling us this only made things worse, because then they really should've been prepared for us.
People flying on to Moscow were told they would have to wait around for 8 hours before any connections could be made. They were driven into downtown Helsinki and given city tour tickets and meal tickets.
A young family and their baby were originally set to fly to Warsaw direct from Helsinki. They were told they would have to wait 4 hours, fly to Copenhagen, and then to Warsaw. Not sure how their situation ended up.
There were five of us on our way to Vilnius. The first one of us to get up to the counter was told she would have to wait 3 hours, fly to Talinn, and then wait 5 hours and finally to Vilnius. For some reason, once the rest of us got up to the counter, that flight was sold out. Once they searched for a bit more, they found a flight in 1 hour to Riga with a half-hour layover before flying off to Vilnius. A much better situation.
Finnair's saving grace in my opinion was that they provided me with a phone card to call Lithuania and America, and they also provided a 13euro coupon for lunch (cha-ching!). Hello, 2 finnish beers and a ham and cheese wrap.
Arrived in Vilnius 8 hours late and crashed into bed.
-dr-