When we were in Lithuania I noticed a country-wide enthusiasm for random knight performances, which was so great. For instance, in the sports stadium, they would actually interrupt the matches going on so that this group of four totally metal-clad individuals could come out into the ring and sword fight. And the fights had some sort of context, but only those individuals seemed to know what it was all about. Very, very weird. The weirdness was enhanced later on in the first day when we saw the crusaders in the lunch buffet, still fully metal-clad and animatedly talking about and working on further knight performances. It became alarming when I noticed that the most enthusiastic one was actually wearing Assless Chain Mail. Like assless chaps, but medieval style.
Of course I nearly shot my dill-enhanced soup out of my nose when I noticed that and called it to the attention of my teammates. It was hard not to crack up every time ACM walked by to the buffet, which was often. The guy liked soup.
Then later on in the week we went to the capital, Vilnius. Right there in the town square in the middle of the day, random medieval knight fighting, again with an ACM wearer. We saw the knights throughout the city all that day as they wandered around, still completely metal-clad, browsing in shops and such. Then they'd reconvene in the square or on a corner for further random sword fighting. The crowds seemed to accept this as a completely normal, everyday occurrence. Which says to me that Lithuanians are comfortable with assless chain mail.
3 comments:
Assless chain mail . . . a random local custom that will NOT catch on in the Great White North, at least not in winter. Those foxy Lithuanians!
ACM--the chain mail of summer.
Quinn would love it -- he's been wearing an ice cream bucket on his head pretending to be a knight.
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