Brief trip to Vilnus

I didn't actually get to Vilnus, nor have I even left the city. But I had a nice evening at a local restaurant. Alla's in Saint Petersburg for a couple of days and I didn't want to dine alone. Unable to round up any of my classmates for dinner, I set out to the local high-end cafeteria for a dinner I at least wouldn't have to wait for.

The restaurant was fairly full, and the only table I spotted had four chairs. I figured if I was lucky, somebody would get desperate enough to sit down. Sure enough, a really nice lumberman sat down with me halfway through my meal. He lives in Vilnus and has an office in Minsk. He used to have a third office somewhere in Russia, but had to scale back for challenging economic times. He spends one week out of three in his office here. He buys Belarusian lumber and sells it worldwide. Before the economic crisis, he was shipping some thirty cubic meters of lumber every week, but it's less now.

Anyway, he's a really nice guy and made a fantastic dinner companion. I even enjoyed the fact that he didn't hassle me about my age. He asked, and I answered that I don't count years. He replied, "Better to count friends than years, right?"

Right.