After our morning visit to the Capitol, my sister got rid of me by passing me off to Lolita. She is also originally from Daugavpils and lives in her own condo with some boarders. Which one — again, I won't say, to respect her privacy. If Lolita reads this and wants to drop a link in the comments, that'd be great.
The complex sits on a hill, and it's quite beautiful overall. There's a pool, a small gym, and a rec room with internet, all included in the monthly maintenance fee. There were a lot of people in the evening, pedaling away, stomping on treadmills, and swimming in the pool.
After touring the condo complex, we rolled downtown, checking out whatever we came across along the way. For example — an American physical culture center. The doors there are mirrored on the outside and transparent on the inside. The sheer size — like everywhere in America — boggles the mind. Click on the photo and see for yourself. Notice that the patrons, so as not to waste time, watch TV simultaneously with their exercises. The pool, by the way, was flooded during our visit, so it was closed, but there will definitely be a separate post about the floods.
The workout machine area, top view
Also on our way, we stumbled upon a weekly exhibition of cars restored by enthusiasts. Judging by the supreme quality and impressive quantity, it's a popular hobby around here. Generally, I really dislike photos of the "tourist and another generic landmark where crowds of visitors have already taken pictures before you" variety. Lolita, on the other hand, loves them, and she had the camera. As the saying goes, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Besides, no matter how indifferent I am to cars, they were beautiful — a fitting match for Lolita.
One of the most beautiful
After the cars, we went to a sports store, then to a pet store. There were kitties and doggies in cages there with prices ranging from a symbolic $30 to a hefty $800. What's more, the price isn't called a price, but an "adoption fee." It's such a politically correct term for selling animals, which, by the way, don't stay beautiful little puppies and kittens for long, and then they become very hard to sell. I don't know whether the store resolves this problem humanely, but there is undoubtedly a considerable difficulty here. Usually, instead of buying cheap animals, people take them from a shelter, and the adoption fee there is actually even higher than in the store. I don't remember exactly why: either the vaccinations are already done, or they need to recoup the maintenance costs so it doesn't close down.
Beauty
There was also a huge, talkative parrot in the store; its previous owner couldn't spend as much time with it as the bird wanted. The parrot cost over a thousand and was very big, but looked incredibly cool. I hope someone does buy it, especially since the store is quite popular and the animals don't gather dust on the shelves there, pardon the pun. (I don't understand, by the way, why one should apologize for a pun, if it makes things funnier and better — I guess it's just a figure of speech, so we'll play by the rules.)
Meanwhile, Lolita bought some ice cream at Culver's, and I tried it too. Culver's is a fast-food chain decked out in blue tones. For the millionth time I'm talking about eateries, and it's no wonder, since America is a supersized fastfood nation. The first Culver's appeared relatively recently — in 1984 it was founded in Sauk City, Wisconsin by a man named George Culver and his family. Now there are over 370 such restaurants in the US, all because Culver stubbornly carried the load in the beginning, despite the fact that the restaurant couldn't turn a profit for two years. Old man George didn't suffer and put his kids to work for nothing — today the chain is considered high-class for fast food, and the food there is better than the standard McDonald's and Burger King. For instance, the meat isn't frozen, it's fresh.
Instead of a motto, this time the signature products are listed
However, we're not interested in Culver's for its rather ordinary hamburgers, but for what it's famous for first and foremost — its ice cream. Here I must say that in America I've learned a lot of new words that frequently pop up in everyday life but rarely in literary speech. The bulk of these words relates to food, as one of the basic human activities. Here I need to beep like an android, that's how needlessly pseudo-scientific the previous sentence turned out. Still, it's accurate, so I'll continue about those words that relate to ice cream.
We ate ice cream at Culver's not only this time, but also after leaving Six Flags, and I forgot to write about it that time. So I'm making up for it. For starters, astonishing as it may seem (cliché special for Lena), the ice cream at Culver's was not called by one of the few words our parents took away from their middle school English courses — ice-cream. Instead, it was called by the terrifying, incomprehensible word Sundae. It looks weird, and it's unclear how to pronounce it. Nothing short of a conspiracy against foreigners. It's all the more bizarre that even the local Russian speakers didn't know why that was. Zadornov would've said they've gone completely dumb in America — they live here for ten years and don't know the why and how. Then again, they've already dubbed me a "why-asker" for my questions, which sounds rather dreary — "infomaniac" would be better, it's more techy. In any case, Lolita dispelled my fears regarding the mental state of Latvians in the US, because she knew why the menu said Sundae instead of Ice-Cream.
The answer is impossibly simple — Sundae=Ice-Cream+Topping. For people devoid of English knowledge even at a middle-school level, or perhaps devoid of imagination, I'll translate: topping comes from the word "top". Thus, according to the usually simple-minded methods of American word formation, the word topping means covering ice cream with syrup or jam, or maybe even crushed nuts or chocolate. It follows from this that a Sundae is simply ice cream poured over or sprinkled with something on top. Two cities mainly vie for the word's origin; the logical version seems to be that such ice cream was served only on Sundays (Sunday), hence the name. In any case, by the end of the 19th century, such a dish was already popular.
After Six Flags, we bought a classic Banana Split at Culver's, invented all the way back in 1904. It's the most popular type of ice cream-based dessert, arranged in quite a tricky way: in an oval ice cream dish there are three kinds: vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. They are separated by a banana partition (I made this part up, checking to see if anyone will catch me on an inaccuracy) and poured over with syrups, each of its own kind, with the exception of the vanilla — it gets pineapple poured over it. On top of that, there are usually dessert cherries, whipped cream, and crushed nuts.
Banana Split Sundae from Culver's
Lolita, meanwhile, bought something that also wasn't quite ice cream, but something more liquidy and with add-ins; I think it had something to do with custard, that is, a sweet cream made of eggs and milk. At Culver's they freeze it, in any case it turns out delicious. Back home recently, the ice cream sold in stores has been getting worse and worse in class, and in cafes it's purely for milkshakes. Good thing we at least have the toppings — they're made by the Latvian company Spilva.
Spilva "Egg Liqueur" topping - tastes alright; although it has alcohol