Camper Place, mini camping Lithuania

Not only the best, also the friendliest, nicest and cheapest place we stayed and although most things are works in progress it had the best facilities. Two large, clean, airy shower/wc's one with a guests washing machine (€3) and another toilet at the reception cum bad weather hang out and apothecary!

There are two distinct camping areas to the East and West of the house. The one on the West has two rows of evergreens which provide shade for the vast majority of the day.

We chose the West side which had the best cherry trees, the strawberries, plus a table and two benches

There are numerous cherry trees, plus strawberries, herbs, n veg. We were told to help ourselves to herbs and fruit - in a year when Daiva has been working on them they are (may be) sold.

The hospitality of Kees and Daiva is mind boggling, it would be exceptional in the Netherlands, in Lithuania it was like entering a magical world. 

Daiva an ex teacher has encyclopedic knowledge of the local flora, great relationships with the local fauna, including a family of hedgehogs, a grass snake, cats, a dog, sparrows, swallows, flies and mozzies!

This was the first ever designated camper site in Lithuania. The main difference between this one and all the others that we stayed at was the intention. It is not perfect, many things show the lack of available capital, with inventiveness and creativity often replacing professionalism. In contrast to some places where the cash obviously flowed like water into the projects, the clearly felt aim here is to give the guests the best possible (ecological) experience of the camping, the hosts and Lithuania. e.g. This was the only campsite with soap, where the w.c. and hand paper didn't run out! One other had dispensers (for show or summer maybe). On arrival Daiva brought us a cup of her excellent 'abracadabra' (same term in Lithuanian!) herbal tea with a massive teaspoonful of creamy honey.

Daiva has made a hand drawn map of the locale, she collects, dries, packages and sells local plants providing the Latin name and where possible the name in up to 7 languages, there is also (cheap!) delicious, natural honey from their farm available.

There are numerous rave reviews of the site and Kees and Daiva. Having described the place as perfection - my idea of being told to eat as many cherries as I want and can - and heaven - getting to sit in shade, with wifi, cherries, strawberries, local beer and having no time on the internet due to the possibility to learn from a generous master! The least I can do is add my own praise

Europos Parkas

An expensive day out by general Lithuanian standards: €8 entry pp €2 parking €1.50 to take photos!

Like so many things here excluding the nature, disappointing. 

The park is beautifully laid out. Huge, generous grounds, lots of space for each art work, carefully placed within an environment. Lovely walks from one piece to the next, nice mixtures of shade and sunlight. 

It's silly things like the silver plates with artist info, some unreadable cos of the sun reflection, even more are faded. 

Lots of what I call 'wank art'; (popular?) artists who get huge grants and make big HUGE meaningless crap instead of small meaningless crap that they can bullshit about til the cows come home about.

The aforesaid are interspersed with deep, amazing, clever, tricksy, subtle pieces.

You can buy a postcard to send to friends with a special postmark for Europe it costs €2! 

The lady at the gate recommended the restaurant, which is over priced, has a very badly translated menu and nothing we were interested in (e.g. soup of the day?!) is available today. The waitress speaks fair American English, she is polite but typifies my experience of Lithuanian attitude in a sort of off hand coldness, that doesn't invite any attempt at warmth or friendliness and doesn't issue any. 

Our visit is cut short by my mate (who is always late insisting we return to Vilinius exactly at five - I said we'd be back 'around 5' - got phoned at 1 minute to. 

Himself didn't mind was already fed up of my commentary

I didn't take photos of the pieces I really disliked!

 

Rinkusˇkiai Restoranas Alaus Kelias

We are staying in a fab campsite with no eating facilities, it was super hot and I felt disinclined to cook, so we decided to have huge bought lunches and easy evening meals (hence some weight loss).

We picked a brewery to go to with a well recommended restaurant attached.

When I saw the building, the full car park and the car loads of trendy, budding Lithuanian elite, I tried to persuade Himself that we should go and look for the other place our hosts had suggested to eat at. Luckily for me, its proximity to the brewery and his hunger (due to my tardiness with time) meant that he over ruled me. "Just have a look at the menu and if you hate it I will just have a kvass n you can hv a beer!"

First the waiter surprised me; professional, open, polite, helpful, eager to be of service, no hint of attitude, toadying, patronising or arrogance - the kind of waiting on that Americans hope/dream of giving, that Germans and Austrians take for granted.

I will start with the pointers for improvement so I can freely wax lyrical about everything else.

The net chairs outside are too low for the tables. I noticed it as soon as I sat down and  my deep dish of soup compounded the issue!

The waiter didn't gone back often enough and left too soon missing orders for at least three drinks, another kvass for Himself and my usual 2 glasses of wine. I did get a last beer for during the brewery visit.

I got a completely different meal to the one I ordered! Didn't matter, however both were supposed to be served with mash. What I got came with very bad chips. Unfortunately the roast potatoes that came with the lunch ordered by Himself were also way below par for the rest of the meal.

Complaints over! More or less. 

I started with a beer an Alaus kelias and Himself a kvass* both were delicious. I can't do kvass when I'm wanting alcohol but for a refreshing non alcoholic drink, I haven't found much better.

We ordered, me, Thai tom yum, Himself, beetroot soup. The beetroot soup was mild, earthy, thin, creamy, light, a gorgeous purply pink colour, flavoured with dill, cucumber, a half boiled egg and served with hot boiled potatoes with a dill garnish.

My tom yum was pinky red, richly filled with carrot, paprika, mushrooms, I think there was pesto or something like it. It arrived with a green oily dollop that looked great but as far as I could tell left no trace of flavour. Though the soup was tasty, spicy, well flavoured none of the usual Thai flavours (lemon grass, laos, lime leaves) jumped out and I had to add some of my own chillis in oil to get it up to speed. All that not withstanding, the soup was a perfect introduction to Asian flavours and warmth for unaccustomed palettes and those, like Himself who like spice but mild.

I ordered pork tenderloin with prune sauce, roasted garlic, cheese crisps and mash with a side of vegetables. I got grilled tenderloin, with peas, (dried) cherry tomatoes, crispy bacon, horseradish sauce and mash.

As I said the mash was marked by its non appearance, the peas were very badly cooked, I am guessing by their cracked bullet like exterior either reheated or not cooked in water.

Himself ordered the ribs supposedly with vegetables and wedges. The wedges were (old) roasters which like the chips we took one look at and left to their own devices! The veg was sauerkraut. 

Let's please ignore the supreme let down of the veg. The sauerkraut went amazingly with my pork tenderloin, far better than with the ribs, the dried cherry tomatoes were actually perfectly roasted as was the bacon garnish. The horse radish sauce was unnecessary and didn't contrast brilliantly with the drizzle of light beer marinade.

Ignore everything else I have said about the meal because everything I have mentioned faded into insignificance with the meat. When I put a piece of the ribs in my mouth I felt pity for every practicing Jew, Muslim, Hindu, 7th Day Adventist and all the other non pig eaters of the world ever born!  At the same time my mouth sent praise thanks and gratitude to the pig eating forest dwellers of Northern Europe! Both ribs and tenderloin were delectable perfection. So well cooked, moist, aromatic, tasty but with completely different textures, flavours and feel in the mouth. Generous portions without being over the top, that completely satisfied. The side order of vegetables were a good sized bowl of the mind bogglingly delicious Lithuanian cucumbers, sun ripened tomatoes, just enough red onion and a simple vinaigrette, it was the perfect accompaniment to both meats, especially considering the state of the spuds!

Everything I read agrees with me, this us an excellent place to eat. Most say it is more international than Lithanian I think it's fusion, which takes the best of traditional Lithuanian cooking - methods, ingredients and international standard recipes and ingredients and gives them a tweak in each other's direction.

Dé Marokkaan - Hoofdweg 642-644, 1055 AB Amsterdam

This is yet another one of the shops in BoLo that I am sooooo DONE with.
If you buy meat, you always end up with an extra, useless piece of bone and or scraggy flesh in it that makes it cost the same cost as buying it in any other butcher - totally defeating the object of going there to buy cheap meat! Plus non Muslim/Moroccans get shunted to the back of the queue with each aforementioned group's new arrival - with no apology and when I said something about it, the information that Moroccans/Muslims could expect (to receive) 'voorrang' (precedence) and  if I didn't like it Ididn't have to shop there.
Which is the issue, clearly these people do NOT WANT my custom.
I (as is the law now) have to ask and pay for a plastic bag, all 'desired' customers are still given one automatically and free of charge!
My last condemnation is the sliding pricing scale they try very hard to hide but not well enough - including me being charged more for yoghurt (no price by or on the shelf) and more per kilo for the loose almonds a) than it said on the ticket and b) than the two people before me.
How do I know this? Both of them were given receipts, which they left, I took them and checked my receipt against theirs. We had all bought almonds, we had all bought the same yoghurt, they had prices in common on their tickets, all my prices were higher and none of them were the same as anything on the other two receipts, though they had prices in common!
In short fabulous, cheap meat and provisions if you are in the IN group - shop at the Dirk van den Broek round the corner, on the market or go to the East for good prices if you are not!

Optifit bra

 

I have been looking for a good bra for years. In between bouts of raging at the sellers of the instruments of torture that we are currently mostly forced into. I listened to the outer and inner voices that told me that my body/breasts were wrong

The thought of having a bra that fits well is almost beyond my imagining. A few years ago I decided that I wasn't going to wear bra's any more. The underwires, were cutting into me and the skin next to my armpit and under my boobs was starting to look like I had developed my own manner of self mutilation. 

The very expensive bra's I was forced to buy had to be replaced at least three times a year and only because the underwires would fight their way out of the upper closure. There was no way to get them to stay in once they were through the fabric. I spent probably weeks over the years sewing tiny pieces of material onto the ends of the sockets only to have them wear through. I bought plastic tips which were supposed to keep them in but they (like pretty much every thing in the clothes market) were made for a smaller size.

I managed around 6 weeks without a bra in the NL - I often don't wear one in the UK when I am there and it is not a problem - the visious stares and pseudo sotto voce nasty comments wore me down and I began to search for bra's with no underwires. After three disatrous attempts to get them from the states I eventually bought one from the UK - all of them were too small, all of them were around the 50 euro mark - not including postage.

Having started a proper job I knew I needed to find a new bra solution. For years I have tried to find a made to measure bra company that I could afford. The average quoted price was around 300 pounds and always with underwires.

Then a few weeks ago I came across optifit. It seemed a bit good to be true. But I contacted the number and had the most amazing conversation with Sue McDonald the co owner of the business and designer of the bras http://www.optifitbra.com/. 

We talked about fashion, history, the (ab)use of women's body to sell products that damage and cause pain, the ignored body/breast shape differences and the abnormalizing of non European body shapes/sizes. Amazing! 

You can check out the piece I wrote after my first conversation with her at Goddess is anima. 

Sue said the best thing for your boobs, back, hips, shoulders whatever your breast shape and size is not to wear a bra! 

But as we are suckers for our own (and each other's) oppression. She sent me the info and instrument (optimeasure) to measure my boobs. 

Everything comes in these gorgeous shiny purple envelopes. When the measure arrived I looked at if for the best part of a week before getting it out. While waiting I checked out the videos on you tube. When I opened my package I knew what I was getting and what I was supposed to do with it - and it still wasn't easy. as suggested i did it three times my self and then another three times with my partner

I have to say that while it was really easy and super efficient to put my measurements onto the website (and Sue had seen them the next morning when I phoned), I couldn't work out how to place an order for a bra, so I phoned to give her the credit card details. 

After our first conversation I felt very secure about phoning Sue again and chatting with her. She really is always willing to help - she didn't agree with my measurements and made a couple of alterations. The bra arrived within a week of ordering and again it took me quite a while of looking at the envelope before I dared open it - I was really nervous about being disapointed again.

So now into my second week of wearing the bra and just about to order another I realised I hadn't actually written the three part blog I was intending with tales of finding, measuring and fitting.

another phone conversation and the sending of some photos was necessary to reassure me (though I am not convinced) that the bra is the right size. We agreed some slight adjustments for the next order as I was not going to send it back to be altered - it will do, it's better than anything else I've got or have had for a long while.

I have the best shape I have ever had with a bra. There are no underwires and no scarring but I still can't wait to get in a take it off when I get home (Free the Two!) After an all night party I was very aware of the upper back/shoulder ache that Sue says is to do with my body being pushed into better alignment

Did I say that these made to measure miracles are under the 60 euro mark at 50 pounds - plus postage - which I guessed and over payed for the bra - but the 'optimeasure' was sent for free and cost more than the bra to post!

Club AIR, Amstelstraat 16, 1017 DA Amsterdam, Netherlands - Moda Black - 26 March 2016

What a horrible, nasty, shitty, shitty club.
Rip off puck up joint!
Staff are rubbish. Unfriendly, unhelpful and bar service is miserable, slow. They let people push in front all the time at the entrance and at the bar.
To add insult to injury neither dj could spin! The bar upstairs was some excuse playing uninspiring records and spending most of his time at the bar. downstairs the vj was banal, offensively sexist and not even hot - which would have excused the sexism. The two dancers couldn't dance and the dj was worse than my four year old nephew. We did our best but dancing was pretty impossible to such mediocre mixing.
Which might not be a problem as no one seems to go there to dance anyway!
I should probably add that a friend with us - Polish living in UK was upset by the obvious racism of both staff and clientèle towards people of colour throughout the place!

De Betere Tijden, Gelkingestraat 21, 9711 NA Groningen, Netherlands

Nice, friendly, good service.
Food is OK, not special but, a very reasonable price most around 10 euros. In comparison I thought the Chef's special at 12.50 was over priced (absolutely not complaining!) Not generous portions definitely adequate.
I asked about the changing stuffing on the mushroom and was told red peppers (paprika) and pesto - I checked if it was basil pesto (yes) which struck me as not something I was even willing to try!
I really don't understand burgers with no flavouring but that is apparently how people make them here. A slab of lightly cooked mince with not even salt and pepper doesn't do it for me
We had 6 burgers, with (bad, cheap) cheddar and roseval potatoes which were cooked but still pale. I don't do bread, without the generous crusty bap, the patty looked quite sad. There was no lettuce or tomato, gherkin, ketchup, or mayo with the burger, a goodly side garnish kinda made up for it.
There was supposed to be some kind of beet salad but it wasn't on the plate!
One of us had the Hungarian sauerkraut, it came with a gehakt ball that was more than 40% breadcrumbs, the flavour of the saurkraut was good but it was a small portion.
The cheese plate was laughable! Tiny little squares of pecorino and belgen, some small sliced of too cold, too young brie (no flavour) and more garnish and fruit than cheese - but it was only 5 euros, I would rather pay a bit more and get a bit better
The wine was fabulous - we had the most expensive which at 21 a bottle did not break the bank. it was a lovely Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon
Shame all the tap beers were so strong.
I don't think I'd go again.
They were really cool about us making a fair amount of noise while we played dice.
I recommend it for anyone with a low budget or if you've had some horrid experiences with people being rude or unfriendly but, if money isn't an issue , and you don't need a safe haven and would like some great nosh - try somewhere else