Category: General

That’s the beauty of Southern California: every kind of outdoor activity is just a short drive away.

This photo was taken in Griffith Park, where we hiked with plenty of water and in short sleeves. With it being officially Winter, no shorts (but that is just us – other hikers just went by temperatures and not by date when choosing their outfits consisting of shorts and tank tops).

If we were of the skiing type, we could have been up there on the slopes in Big Bear two hours later.

Our region really caters to every taste.

The last day of the year – the last day of the decade even…

So much happened. In 2000 I had no idea that 10 years later I would celebrate this day today in Southern California, under a blue sky, enjoying the sun, feeling calmly confident that all will be well.

Here’s to the next 10 years! I raise my glass to the world.

20 years ago today, Günter Schabowski, then a member of the SED Politbüro of the German Democratic Republic, gave his now famous press conference about the lifted visiting rules for travels from East to West Germany. When asked by a journalist when the new rules would apply, he said: “Immediately.” This was not quite correct, free travel was planned to begin the next day, but the outcome was that two hours later thousands and thousands of people were swarming to the Berlin Wall, demanding to be let through. The border guards were overwhelmed, opened access points and that was it – the Wall was open, the downfall of the DDR regime began, the Cold War ended and divided Germany started the journey towards reunification.

When writing this it sounds so cut and dried; but, way back then, this moment in history could not have left many Germans unmoved.

A few weeks ago the “Wende Museum” in Los Angeles had installed some original segments of The Wall along Wilshire; last night an additional “Wall of Art” was torn down at the site at midnight in memory of the historic events 20 years ago.

When I went so see the “Wall” in front of the Variety Building, children were playing around the wall segments. They were only interested in the colorful display – and yes, I thought, you are too young to be burdened with thoughts of war and politics. Keep on playing, enjoy the carefree time and leave “the rest” for the time being to the adults.

That’s the lovely sound I heard this morning at 10 minutes past 11 – tires swishing on wet street surfaces.

The rains have started. Finally.  On and off, all day long, gentle showers came and went.

Time for the happy dance again!

Since yesterday all signs point towards the most important event of the season – the first day of rain. Temperatures dropped a bit, the (nearly) eternally blue sky has taken on a grayish hue and we are waiting… waiting…

Not to be caught unawares by this change we decided to accustom ourselves to the sound of splattering water drops – in short, we went into rain training camp and settled down with some coffee at the Shea Terrace at Loyola Marymount University.

Enjoying the sights and sounds of the water sculpture was made twice as sweet by the knowledge that LMU was selected as the 2008 Recycled Water Institutional Customer of the Year by the California WaterReuse Association. Water is “liquid gold” in drought-ridden California; those people at LMU are well aware of it by using sophisticated water-saving techniques and using reclaimed water for all their fountains on campus and for landscape watering.

So we got used again to the sound of falling water. Now the “real” stuff should make it’s first appearance.

The plan was – go out, have some Mexican food and then go for a hike in the park.  As it sometimes happens with plans, this came to naught because we passed a banner saying “Lithuanian Fair.”  How could we resist? We parked the car, paid our entry fee and wandered in. First some food, very yummy. Then we were treated to a speech opening the fair. The speech was not too lengthy, which was good, because it was given in Lithuanian.  After some songs by two choirs a folk dance group took the stage.

That was some spirited dancing! Such a pretty sight, these lovely young women (later joined by some equally good looking young men) in their colorful traditional costumes, showing off their skills.

Anyway, we still wanted to do our hike, so we checked out the stalls at the fair after the dance performance at a pretty fast clip before leaving.  It struck us as slightly strange that at each and every stall we were first addressed in Lithuanian and only upon signaling that we were not able to understand did the very friendly stall operators switch to English.  Upon arriving back home my curiosity got the better of me and I checked out “Lithuanians in Los Angeles” on the Internet. It turned out that by pure chance we had stumbled upon the largest Lithuanian fair outside of Lithuania. With only 10.000 people of Lithuanian descent living in Los Angeles, of which only 2.000 still speak their native language, for 60 years this fair has been the annual highlight of this smallish community.

So they do keep up their traditions.  They also try to keep up their language with a school of their own which operates on Saturdays. But – they also live completely in the here and now, as is amply demonstrated by this photo from the sidelines: