VILNIUS - They say that Lithuanians like to talk about the weather almost as much as the British, and no more was this the case than in late May, when temperatures soared into the mid-30s breaking records and causing widespread havoc and confusion throughout Vilnius. For several days city residents, who had only recently been bemoaning the cold, were suddenly complaining about the overwhelming heat, with air conditioning unavailable in many workplaces.
"I wasn't prepared for such heat," said Simona Casaite, a marketing director at an electricity firm. "While working in my office I felt very light-headed and began having extraordinary hallucinations, it was awful!"
For people whose work involves driving around the Vilnius streets there have been a number of out-of-the-ordinary occurrences, as well as some unexpected hazards. "It's a lot riskier to drive in Vilnius," said Donatas Skvarnavicius, a cable delivery worker, "because instead of looking at the road you look at the beautiful girls with short skirts who have appeared like mushrooms after the rain."
Apart from potential lust-inspired road accidents, there are other health risks to look out for when the mercury rises. Lithuanian doctors have confirmed that this kind of sudden onset of hot weather can be a shock to your body. Overheated people become sleepy, light-headed and are likely to see stars. They can also become disoriented.
Not surprisingly, for the inhabitants of Vilnius suffering in the heat, the weekends couldn't come soon enough.
Their number-one destination is Trakai, the ancient capital of Lithuania. With its redbrick fairytale castle and island-studded lakes, it's the quintessential day out destination for those escaping the baking asphalt of Vilnius.
When temperatures soared to 32 degrees Celsius on the last Saturday in May, it seemed the whole city flocked to Trakai. Unfortunately the locals weren't prepared for such an onslaught, and visitors were complaining that there weren't enough ice creams, pedalos or rowing boats to go around.
For other visitors such attractions weren't necessary as they had come prepared to enjoy what has become a ritual in Lithuania whenever the sun comes out: a spontaneous shashlik convention.
For the uninitiated, shashlik, a kind of shish-kebab, is a post-Soviet summertime staple. To prepare shashlik, first you should marinate your meat (pork neck is preferred) overnight in a sauce consisting of onion, garlic, herbs and spices. Then you're ready to drive to the lake, skewer your meat and barbecue it over a tray of hot coals. This delicacy will then be washed down with bottles of Svyturys beer, which you will have been cooling in the water at the edge of the lake.
After this feast it's customary to go for a swim. Naturally this practice is completely against the advice of doctors, who say that on days such as these people tend to forget that it's unwise to go into the water after eating heavy food and drinking alcohol.
Swimming was especially precarious on the May weekend in question as lakes can still be unevenly heated at that time of year. In other words, though the surface of the water is quite warm, under the surface the deeper water is still extremely cold, potentially creating a nasty shock for those who dive straight in.
Paramedics have been working overtime treating cases of another danger: sunstroke. This problem was particularly acute in the favourite seaside resorts of Palanga and Klaipeda.
But sunscreen and shade weren't the only things in short supply there. Palanga, a peaceful, pensioner paradise during the colder months that turns into the Lithuanian party hotspot when summer comes, was thrown into action prematurely this season, and by Sunday May 27 all the bars on Basanaviciaus, the main street, had completely run out of beer.
In fact one cafe claimed to have served 100 litres of beer over the weekend, but by early Sunday afternoon had to declare that the pumps were dry, much to the horror of holidaymakers.
In Klaipeda, food and drink retailers were also suffering from the heat, or rather their customers were. In all, eight individual complaints were made to the State Food and Veterinary Authorities about shops selling food that had spoiled.
The problem was caused by a lack of refrigerators that could deal with the searing heat. Customers reported that shelves were full of rotten meat, sour milk and melted chocolate.
Despite this initially sticky hurdle, the Lithuanian seaside tourist industry has a bright summer to look forward to. Hotel bookings for the holiday season have sold almost as quickly as the cold beer.
A hotel administrator of the five-star Hotel Vanagupe in Palanga said that people keep calling and asking her for places, but she has to inform them that all 98 rooms are booked out for the summer and have been for a long time.
Another effect of this abrupt heat has been the remarkable tropical storms which have occurred sporadically in recent weeks. As Lionginas Pakstys from the Lithuanian meteorologist office explains, when it is very hot and humid, big balls of cloud are created close to the ground. These are likely to produce electrical discharges and hailstones.
This type of severe weather has created some serious problems across Lithuania. Not only have moving vehicles had their windshields cracked by the driving force of these mammoth hailstones, but lightning strikes have touched off blazes that have destroyed crops, barns and in one case a farmer's home.
Luckily the effect of the hot weather isn't quite so devastating for most people in Lithuania. Still, with meteorologists predicting a long, hot summer here, it couldn't hurt to stock up an emergency beer supply and keep that marinated shashlik handy, just in case.
