My tits are getting fat!

No, this is not a report of my body (where the opposite is the case, thanks for asking....), it's the black (coal?) tits I am talking about.

Since November I have been feeding them, with fine, homeproduced lard (still have not found any in the shops in Vilnius, but am beginning to ask myself if they dye it yellow here) and peanuts, in an empty Mamade tin. The last one lasted till about today.

Today another session of melting down the pork fat, and seeing it's Christmas, they had some raisins mixed into it as well. Aren't they just lucky?

They are beginning to look quite chubby now, and I wonder how much longer they will be able to swing themselves up to the fifth floor balcony....

War reports on Georgia

Here the New York Times reports a very critical US report on the performance of the Georgian army during the August war. Disorganised, running away (on day 2) leaving everything behind including their dead, people appointed on friendship rather than on capability. No surprises there.

According to an article in the Georgian Times the Georgian President says that 'in the nearest future we face no danger of large-scale military conflict by the Russian side'.

Here it says that Russia is 'now introducing even molre troops, tanks and other assault weapons onto Georgian territory'.

All in today's Google mail alert for the word 'Tbilisi'. Go figure.

Winter - the Georgian style

On Monday I was working at home in Tbilisi, and thought of going down to the Ministry to get some more information.

I changed my mind when I saw the snow outside. What with living high up on the TV tower mountain.

On Tuesday I had to go down, and slid over the snowy, round cobbles till I hit something more akin to pavement. By Tuesday night it had thawed a little and was broadly ok.

Went to bed very early; flight leaving at 4.50 am; taxi ordered for two hours before that.

Got a call that the taxi was there even half an hour earlier - luckily I knew the company's way of operating and was more or less ready. Outside it had snowed! Another 3 inches of snow were lying there!

Got to the top of my stairs - no taxi to be seen. Drat! The company's number was listed as private in my mobile; a colleague did not answer her phone at 2.20 am. Double drat!

So did what I usually do, and went off down the road, dragging my case through the deep and fresh snow. Vocabulary was used.

Halfway down I turned round - and saw my taxi sitting somewhere between me and the house. We made contact.

Then I never thought I would get to the airport, the way it slithered down the mild incline. I don't really think you should be using the handbrake to slow the car down on, effectively, ice. Isn't first gear for that. But what could I do - the driver was hanging on for dear life!

Eventually it got better, on the main road. Spotted some road lorries being loaded with salt. Crossed the river, on the other side there is an incline, which, it would appear, was covered in ice, and chaps standing on the back of a road lorry chucking shovels full of salt onto the road and any passing cars. Some cars apparently had had to stop at some stage, and they could not get going again (felt quite a bit of schadenfreude at the mercs who for the first time did not own the road). The taxi driver got round all these obstacles, without stopping, and there was a huge sigh of relief when we got to the top of that road.

But even President George W Bush avenue, to the airport, was not free of snow and so it was a fairly careful drive (they should always drive like this, what a difference that would make).

At the end I gave him a 10 buck tip; he was gobsmacked! It was not really too much, what with the conditions, Christmas etc. Left a guy happy....

Duda - in memoriam

Duda was a lovely dog. A Dalmatian belonging to my colleague Andro, aged less than two years.

Today at the hash he was having a wonderful time, running with everyone, especially at the front, chasing some sheep (hmmmm). At the end he was with the front team, when we returned to the car park, next to a very busy road.

Then no-one kept an eye on him, and before we knew it, he was knocked down by a car - a glancing blow, but at the speed at which Georgian cars are going on main roads, it was enough to kill him.

Let's remember him as a dog having a lot of fun.

Partial burial

Here is a story of 81-year-old Lithuanian Mr J. L. who a few weeks ago had to have a leg amputated due to diabetic complications, as happens far too often.

The hospital gave the leg to the family. The family was aghast and did not know what to do with it. So they went to the municipality who gave them permission to bury it in the family plot. 3 weeks later the owner died himself, and rejoined his leg.

Given that this story landed in the papers, one assumes that this is not how Lithuanian hospitals normally deal with these things. Or where they looking for a fee to dispose of the leg? What about then other body parts, appendices, breasts, tumours?

I suppose it's better than the incident in Scotland 8 or so years ago when a leg was found, chewed by foxes, under a bush in hospital grounds. That took a bit of explaining....

 

What is it with Georgian bakers these days?

Is there really a flour shortage? Has the demand for bread shrunk? The price has increased by 40% over the last two years.

6 weeks ago or so I had reported on my desperate search for the Georgian lavash.

Yesterday I went off for my weekly shop, and passed by my local baker's which was open. Yeah! So I could leave the bread buying until just before I got home, and it would be nice and fresh.

Tootled down to almost the river, and picked up the other bits, climbed back up the hill, arrived at the baker's - and he had no bread left - would be open again at 8 pm, he told me. So I had to run a bit down the hill again to find my lavash. In the evening, going out, I passed another baker's who does very good bread, and who I had seen open recently, and he was closed, too. Also, I have to say, that the bread has not been as hot, fresh and crunchy as it used to be - a lower turn-over? Does not sell like hot-cakes any more?

Very strange. Meanwhile I am off on the hunt for yeast. Seems difficult to find in Tbilisi - will I really have to go to the hypermarket 16 km from my home, for a packet of yeast?

What Brits can't buy in Lithuania

Currants - or in Georgia; they are just not available; but raisins in various shades are. Black raisins can be substituted.
Marmalade - actually, you can get it at Marks and Spencer's, even in different varieties, thin and coarse-cut, and from blood oranges. Somehow I like to make my own marmalade; recently someone brought me over a tin of Mamade, the pulp and peel of Seville oranges.....
Lard - you'd think you would be able to buy this in a country whose diet is,er, not that easy on fat. But in fact you have to make your own. How do you do that? You buy some pig skins (with the fat on), stick them in a low oven for a few hours and the fat melts. Learnt that a long time ago in Scotland.
Mixed peel - you can get it in Goodwill in Georgia, but when you go there, you end up buying all sorts of stuff you don't need.....Here's a recipe for it; American, and typical in its large quantities.... a 'gallon bag' would almost fill my freezer. I bought a bag of oranges, drank the juice of 8 of them, made the mixed peel and probably have enough for the next year.
Bramble jam - a friend complains about that; also you have to make your own, if you find the brambles.
Baking powder - people tell me. The problem is that it comes in sachets, called 'kvepimo miltelai'. With a German background I know those sachets, from the Dr Oetker company, well. But it seems Lithuanians and Poles bake for larger families; the sachets we get here are for 1kg of flour; in Germany they are for 500g. So careful if you use them for a German recipe calling for one sachet! 'Levure Boulangere', which I bought at IKI the other day, delighted to find sachets for 500g, in fact contains dried yeast, as I discovered to my horror.....

Then again, you can buy all sorts of other lovely stuff, like zillions of sorts of mushrooms.

'Black assholes'

...is how the president of the Lithuanian Basketball Federation described two of his players.  He was not referring to the colour of their hair. With friends like this....

The chaps in question did not know about this for a while seeing as they do not speak Lithuanian. A complaint went to the General Prosecutor's office who let him off on a technicality.

Meanwhile 80% of people in a Vilnius University survey said they could not work or communicate with 'different' people (on the grounds of ethnicity, sexual preference, language or religion). I wonder who they asked and where the survey was carried out. I knew Lithuania was 'differentphobic' but that the rate is so high is appalling. No?

Skipping school for a better education

Yesterday some tens of thousands of German school students went on the streets to complain about lack of teachers and the poor standard of Germany's education system (recently the duration of school education required for university entry was reduced from 13 years to 12, but they still have to cover the same amount of work). There is much talk of parents forking out for extra classes for their darlings, huge pressure on children and so on.

Oh, I remember it well. We did the same things, for the same reasons, in the early 70s. I always felt a fraud, given that I hated school- so why was I demonstrating for more teachers? It got me out of class!

My first demo was at the tender age of 15. Which was before the minimum school leaving age and therefore not entirely legal. Which would have been fine - had I not been a smart aleck and been in the front of the demo, right in front of the press fotographers. Teachers read newspapers, you know.

But the sky did not fall in! Not that I really cared by then....

To deal with the teacher shortage I swear that half my classmates trained as teachers. Life-time job, all those holidays, those afternoons off....As must have done the rest of that generation in Germany. By the time they finished many could not get jobs as teachers, and even those who did left after a short while - either unable to procure a permanent position or just through fed-upness.

Obama and Georgia

This article suggests that Georgia may feel a little chill from the win of Barack Obama in the US presidential election. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Georgia, or rather its president, has been rather self-satisfied in recent years, only hearing what it wants to hear from foreign governments and international bodies. The article goes on to say:

"Georgia had to meet NATO at least halfway," said
Lincoln Mitchell, a professor of international politics at New York's
Columbia University. "And what it got under the Bush administration was
the constant message: 'Have bad elections? We'll cover for you. Make a
foolish decision and get pulled into a war with Russia? Here's a
billion bucks, don't worry about it. Keep cracking down on media and
civil liberties? It's OK.'"

It's about time things on human rights, social protection including health and I am sure a number of other matters were cracked down on by those bodies Georgia wishes to join. Under current performance Georgia may dream of joining NATO, but as for joining the EU - forget it!

Coffee in Vilnius

The Baltic Times writes a gushing article on coffee houses in Vilnius, and especially the chains we now have here, like Coffee Inn or Double Coffee, where you get 'a decent breakfast along with your morning coffee'.  If you have plenty of time, that is - the service in Double Coffee, whether you are in Kiev or Vilnius, is notoriously slow.  After one morning finding half the staff asleep on the benches in a Kiev branch open 24 hours a day, it kind of put me off a little.

But are these reports really neutral? Did I not hear the other day that journalists get paid by the subjects of the 'research' for writing nicely about them?

Who started the war?

Interesting article here about the Georgia/Russia war. It suggests Georgia started the war, despite Georgia's vehement protestations. International observers (in Tskhinvali?)including a Finn, a Belorussian and a Pole, describe the firing on Tskhinvali as indiscriminate, with at least 48 rockets falling in civilian areas (this is blamed on the inexperience of the Georgian military).

The Georgians, naturally, dismiss this report. 'Who counted these rockets anyway?', they ask. Would have thought it ain't that difficult to count a rocket that landed, would you?

Mrs Palin at her best...

Lovely article on a spoof which she feel for hook, line and sinker...

Vilnius miniatures

I always wondered why the Lithuanian post office stamps mail on the back on the envelope when it arrives. Seemed a bit of a job creation scheme.  But now it's coming in useful, in judging the performance of the post office.

When I returned home around 25 September, and went to my local branch staffed, it seems, by toothless old crones who only speak Russian, to pick up a parcel I was surprised not only to receive a parcel, but also a whole pile of letters. The manageress of the delivery people, as her staff found more and more letters for me, visibly had steam coming out of her ears - did I get the feel she was managing a kindergarten?  Today I found my letter box crammed with letters. Bit surprised. Among them letters from my university dated 16 September reminding me to register for courses which I have been studying for the last fortnight. One or two letters looked a bit crunched.... It occurred to me to look at the back of the letters - the oldest letters arrived in Vilnius on 27 September, the newest on 4 October. Don't send anything perishable by post!

...on a bus yesterday (was shooting all over Vilnius for what I hope was probably a row of pointless medical appointments) I was intrigued to spot the driver of the minibus behind me wearing a seatbelt. It's unusual, but some of them are rather wild drivers, and perhaps he was wilder than most? The picture of apparent safety was a little disturbed by the cardboard cutout of a cannabis leaf dangling from his mirror.

I see Lithuania runs an annual quiz about the Lithuanian constitution (glad we don't do that in the UK...). Here it says that among this years winners are teachers, students and a prison inmate - good for him or her. I wonder if that person's human rights are being properly respected - but he/she should be able to stand up for him/herself.  Presumably people allied to the legal profession are excluded from this quiz, otherwise it would be a bit of a poor show for their profession. It's a good and worthwhile activity (has a flavour of the Soros Foundation about it, no?), but it seems a bit of an anorakish thing to do. But then we also have the national spelling competition every spring, where in townhalls up and down the country people take part in a spelling test (in some ways I fancy that one, always having been a good speller, but I'm not quite sure if my Lithuanian is up to knowing where some words begin and end sometimes).

Changes, changes

So, after the war with Russia, it's time to change the Georgian government again. About time, too - it's lasted for almost the whole year!

The prime minister has been dismissed, after negotiating hard with donors over the 4.5 billion USD donation for Georgia following the war. Remind me again who started it?

The PM (37) is going to be replaced by the current Georgian ambassador in Turkey (35), whose chief qualification for the job is to attract Turkish investment into Georgia.

Georgia, the wonderful investment location.....with an unstable government in an unstable region, a probably declining economy, huge interest rates, no protection against bank collapses....right....

Where's the lavash?

The Georgian lavash, not the Armenian one. It's that flattish (but leavened) bread baked on the inside of a stone oven. Some bakers are better at it than others. The best lavash is the one that is so hot that you can barely touch it to carry it home.

I'm used to things appearing and disappearing in shops in Georgia, and 'my' baker opening and closing. But I thought he was 'always' just closed for the summer.  He was closed when I was here in September, as was the other one (the best!) whose breadshop I passed on my way to work at the time.

Last weekend my baker was open, and it was wonderful. So tonight I trundled along - and found him closed. Muttering slightly, I turned back down the hill to find 'my' other baker - to find that he had finished for the day. Where to find another lavash? He waved generally in an easterly direction.

Along I trundled, further down the hill, round some corners, down some side streets - always having the nostrils on draft (you can smell a good baker's from the distance), the eyes peeled for people carrying lavashes. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I thought I'd be reduced to buying a French stick from the expensive Spanish place with the French name near the Chancellory, when finally I found a little baker's which had some left. They were like that, too. Nothing to write home about - but by that time I was beyond caring.

Wonder what causes the ups and downs of supplies. Do people not buy them during the week? Is there a flour shortage? Are the bakers suddenly taking it easy? Are they making too much money (the price has increased by 40% since I started here two years ago)?  Strange....

A child from every country

Lovely report here from the Guardian, on a child from every UN-recognized country living in the UK.

Skiing in Lithuania??

This article praises the slopes and infrastructure of Lithuania - for skiing!

Bit of a surprise there - Lithuania is essentially flat; the highest mountain is 957 feet (or 292 m above sea level). Would not think it is quite the thing for professionals....

Thank God for that!

Here it says that the referendum (why a referendum?) on delaying the closure of the Ignalina Power Station in Lithuania (an agreement condition on joining the EU) failed to have sufficient voters (50%) to make it valid (though those who did vote were nine to one for the delay).

Would have been embarassing to have achieved the planned delay. On the other hand, given that the planned new nuclear power station will not be ready until 2015 at the earliest, it also means that there will be an energy gap between 2009 (closure date) and the running of the new station, of 70% of electricity. This means though, apparently, an increased dependence on Russian oil or gas - not entirely a happy thought.

Lithuanian election

Once again the Lithuanian parliamentary elections have produced a bit of a mogre for the forthcoming parliament. The most successful party, the Christian Democrats, got 19.07% - the reigning Social Democratic Party was fourth with 11.84% (all after counting 1929 out of 2034 wards), with the National Revival Party and the Law and Order Party (the mind boggles) in between. I have a feeling the first three are all right-wing. Kubilius, the leader of the winning party, looks shockingly aged.

What sort of government will we get?

Cultural destruction in Georgia

This Wall Street Journal article describes the Russian destruction of Georgian cultural artefacts since the war (though many of these appear to be in South Ossetia).

They noticed, and I noticed while in Gori, that they did not destroy the Stalin museum in Gori.

All that glitters....

...is not gold - it may be the gold-tinted windows of the ministry block, and the two cones beside it in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan for the last 10 years. (Though I am horrified to notice that the little statue I received for my services may actually be gold).

What a capital! Astana was only created as a city in 1950, and for the last 10 years or so, since the capital moved there, it has been hugely developed, on a grand scale, with massive new public buildings (some memories there of the stalinist style of huge archways etc), huge blocks of flats, wide boulevards, snazzy bridges, immaculately clean - but a people city in the style of Vilnius it is not. In fact we never saw many people either during the day time or in the evening.

Anyone who comes there will think that there is no poverty in Kazakhstan - but is that right? What about the Aral Sea area and other remote places?

Can't really talk much more about this what with being paid to advise the government (on social matters)....but it was most interesting!

Dame Edna for President!

Why did we not think of this before? Here is a eulogy of her (or do you do eulogies only after someone has died?).

Just think of her capabilities - is good at public speaking, has her heart in the right place (I heard wonderful comments about old people's homes in Adelaide last year), gets on with anyone (though there is a certain risk of foot-in-mouth disease); she would stun Mr Putin, she has travelled the world extensively (though perhaps, I fear, not many Muslim countries), and She Has A Title.

Vastly more impressive than Mrs Palin.

Can't help feeling sorry for the poor woman

That Mrs Palin, running mate (running mistress? - maybe not the best choice of term) of John McCain in the forthcoming US elections, seems to be in for a hard time. Not only did a number of people comment on the fact that she gave birth to a Down's syndrome child only five months ago, but now her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant and unmarried. Happens in the best families, though it often also says something about the quality of the family life. Personally I am not that much in favour of mothers leaving their babies so young.

What if Mrs Palin were a man? Would he be similarly criticized, or would the assumption be that the wife would look after the children? But then, what does Mr Palin do - maybe he is a house-husband?

Within 10 feet of Greatness!

There I was, sitting in my favourite spot outside the Neringa Hotel, minding my own business, when the road cleared magically, and suddenly a cavalcade of government cars shot by. 't was Angela Merkel and Mr President Valdas Adamkus rushing along no doubt from the Parliament (and the currently very sensitive memorials of the 1991 events) to the President's Palace. Our President's feelings about Russia are well-known - at times his behaviour is rather petty (I can't believe that when the new Russian ambassador arrived [incidentally a military man with a Georgian surname] the president refused to see him for a fortnight, blaming a full diary). Their exchange of views will have been frank, I suspect.

Strangely, on the German news a few hours later, not a whisper was heard about Lithuania, only about Estonia where it seems she had also been on the same day. The Estonians expressed their feelings about Russia and the Russia language volubly (in English). They said, and they are probably right, that Russia was not a (rational) nation like Western states and should not be treated as such. Germany tends to have a policy of cautious approachment, not entirely in sync with most Western countries, and certainly not in sync with the Baltic states.

The sad demise of Saakashvili

Interesting article here. It reflects much of what the Spanish paper said on Saturday.

But.....did he really compare his country to a girl in a miniskirt, which some people might see as an invitation to rape her?

Things are not looking good - according to Rustavi2, the Russians still seem to be in the country, running over police vehicles, and trying to take the town of Borjomi (deep in Georgia) - the latter was prevented by the plucky police of Borjomi.

¡Ellos están locos, los georgianos!

I go off to Spain, and Mr Saakashvili goes off to Tskhinvali, with all his tanks. Then he gets bopped on the head by the Russian and he cries and cries and cries.

What in God's name was he thinking of?

Now the media are full of how horrible the Russians are, invading another country and all that. And yes, their reaction was, and continues to be, excessive, but please - Who Started Up the Bloody Problem? I had always thought it would not happen (I had anticipated Abkhazia before South Ossetia) because any such war would surely scare off any investors and totally mess up the country's economy. (Apart from having spent most of the last year working up a budget for 'my' part of Georgian government expenditure).

The British and US media are full of how hard done by Georgia is. Yes, it is, by the President it probably did not elect, given the reality of the last elections, despite what OSCE and other election observers rushed to say the minute the polling closed.

The Spanish media, well, ok, one medium, are more balanced, describing Saakashvili as 'incansable' (unflagging) and as one who his western friends have been trying to calm down since he took office. With little success, it would seem. Yesterday, 'El Pais' described how Georgia accepted with 'rage' the ceasefire (not much observed by the Russians). Apparently Saakashvili called the Russians every name under the sun, and he was also 'visibly angry and saying bad words' (malediciendo) about the Westerners. According to the Spanish media, Saakashvili has been omnipresent on US TV, so much so that they wondered how he could run a country (at war!) at the same time.

Meanwhile Rustavi2, the state TV channel of Georgia, says that Medvedev has signed the ceasefire deal. Not before the Russians cut off the railwayline to the west of Georgia and apparently set part of the Borjomi forest on fire (40 ha, not quite a cause for ecological catastrophe, as the channel describes, I would have thought).

Not sure whether there is a great deal of point in my project continuing - so close to success. The government will surely have other priorities now, and the forecast economic growth will surely not happen.

Cultural Differences

Here the Guardian reports on one of the unexpected outcomes (oh, how we consultants love 'unexpected outcomes') of Poland and other countries further east joining the Schengen zone.

Germans are prone (in more ways than one) to sunbathe in the nude. I spent some childhood holidays in a place where people did this. Not entirely sure why - it did not really fit in with other aspects of my childhood, and the North Sea and its beaches are not that hot. But at least I learnt something about human differences.....

Now it seems that Polish people, out for a stroll, also learn about these differences. And they are shocked! So are the Germans for whom it is, apparently, inconceivable that people in clothes should go on a nudist beach and look at the people innocently besporting themselves, as my friend Adrian might have said.

Life in the Mongolian Steppes

This book by a Czech author, Petra Hulova, b.1979, translated only into German - 'Kurzer Abriss meines Lebens in der mongolischen Steppe' - describes the life of a woman, Djaza [transliterated into German], born into a Mongolian family growing up in a ger (yurta) in the steppes of Mongolia.
Ms Hurlova has herself lived in Mongolia for a while - in fact, she has a bit of a Mongolian slant to her eyes; she studied Mongolian at university - the things you can study in Prague!

The story is told very simply - Dzaja grows up in a family with four children, where she is one of two 'bastards' produced by her mother while her mother's husband was not looking; one has a Chinese streak and the other is more Russian. While he and the family accept these two children, at school it is more difficult. Life in general is not that easy, although the family is one of the more prosperous ones. An older sister dies in a horserace, the Russian one goes mad over a boy and gets sent away to Ulan Bator, as does eventually Dzaja. They both find work - but what kind of work - and Dzaja eventually produces a child. Neither of these two sisters ever marry. Meantime in the steppe the youngest sister marries and settles down to country life.

The book is very interesting in its detailed description of Mongolian life - I recognize the descriptions of urban life from my experiences in Kyrgyzstan, with the bazaars, the micro-raions around the town (as in Vilnius, for that matter), the settlements of gers round the outside of the micro-raions, the general neglect, the drunkenness, the meat markets, aspects of Soviet hospital care, also some of the food (though Mongolians also drink salted, fatted [rancid?] tea like the Tibetans). But there are also significant differences to Kyrgyzstan; eg Buddhism pervades everything, the dead are left out in the open for nature to take care of them.....

The structure of the book is a bit strange; Djaza is the narrator for most of it, so much so that her name is never mentioned, and when one or two other narrators (all female, which is a bit of a pain) tell their stories into which she falls, it takes a long time to work out who this 'Djaza' is they are referring to - in her own part her name was never mentioned. I wondered a bit whether the main part of Djaza's had not been long enough to fill a whole book - but on the other hand the stories told by the different people present completely different views of Djaza's account - a story of non-communication in families, I guess.

The only really irritating aspect of the book is the lack of translations of Mongolian words, of which there are many - yes, there is a list at the end of the book, but it is very far from complete. Had someone been lazy here? Sometimes that makes parts of the story difficult to understand.

But generally, it is very interesting and worth reading for someone who goes to work in Mongolia. If they speak German...

Cheap properties for rent!

Are you a Lithuanian government minister, or even vice minister or ministry secretary? Need a place to stay? Fancy a really, really nice location?

Well, just go to the Government's Chancellory Estates Department; they'll sort you out with a lovely flat in the most desirable location in Vilnius (Turniskes) for 180 lt per month. See here and here.

For comparison, a 12 square metre room in a [probably dingy] student hostel costs 170 lt per month, and you would not get much of a flat in the open market for less than 2000 lt.

Beneficiaries of the government's largesse currently include the deputy culture minister and composer Gintaras Sodeika (his own flat is being done up - aaah, the soul, he could not hear himself think, never mind compose in such an environment), various ministry secretaries (similar to vice ministers, but not - apparently - political appointments) and others. The Prime Minister is spitting blood and says if this is really the case, the guilty parties will be punished.

The head of the estates department says that they tried several times to correct the rental price for these flats, but a decision was not made, and they themselves cannot change anythings. 'Our hands are tied, guv'.

I would now urgently look for some other places to stay, if I were a tenant in those apartments - on the other hand, how long will it take to make a decision on these thing?

How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

Another wonderful read which I swiped off the table at the Kulturkaufhaus Dussmann in Berlin - I did not think it would have been translated into English, but here it is!

It's a story about a boy, Aleksander, who grows up in Visegrad in former Yugoslavia, where, shortly after the death of his grandfather, the war breaks out, and in time he and his family flee to Germany.

The book describes a magical boy's childhood, where he goes fishing with his grandfather who is a convinced communist, how he argues with his teacher at the school when the picture of Tito is taken down from the classroom wall, huge family gatherings with a page-and-a-half of the description of the menu....and very gently it slides into a child's view of the war, where people shelter in the basement of high-rise buildings, neighbours suddenly become enemies, people are killed in ways too cruel to imagine....before the journey to Germany, where Alexander grows up.

Then, rather surprisingly, the book's second part seems to tell the same story again, but differently - it's as if the first part is autobiography (though it probably is not, even though the author and the main protagonist share the same name), and the second part is the main protagonist's book that he writes; but knowing the first part is essential to the understanding of the second part.

The style of writing is magical - I've read a few books from south eastern Europe, and they all have a peculiar style in common - where the story is written in what seems to be a very plain way, but it's full of little clusterbombs (unfortunate association here) filled with absolute, often bizarre and very funny, gems. Reminds a bit of the films of Kusturica, though it's perhaps not quite as bizarre as his. This is even shown in his chapter headings, eg 'how sweet is dark read, how many oxen are needed for a wall, why Krajlevic Marko's horse is related to superman, and how it can be that a war comes to a party'.

Well worth getting, either in English or in German.

Karadzic's website

Here it is. Physician, help thyself?

New erections in Vilnius

Some new things have appeared near the crossroads outside my flat, and near some other crossroads. On about 4m high poles (not Poles), about 60 m before the traffic lights, sticking out across the street, are what appears to be little cameras. Near at least one traffic light the camera is nestling nicely in a very dense tree - I am sure that whoever looks at the camera will get a lovely blur of green.

Next to the pedestrian crossings there are also little poles sticking up from the pavement to about hand height, but their purpose is not yet known - they look a bit unfinished. At least the traffic lights near me are not beeping any more.

But what are the cameras for? For speeding? There is certainly a lot of racing along my road at night. In the UK, last time I looked, the speed cameras were big chunky things, not dainty little globes. But what with digital technology and maybe online viewing of things this is much easier. Or are they for making the traffic lights intelligent, so that, as a lone car approaches, they will turn green? Not that there are many lone cars in my road, except at night. More usually, the traffic viscosity is close to that of setting jam. Strange!

A victory for common sense

Here it says that now police in Lithuania no longer need to attend minor traffic accidents, unless a person is injured. Previously they had to attend all accidents, regardless how trivial. In fact, the time 6 years ago I was injured by someone opening his car door in the way of my bike, I should have continued lying in the narrow road with room for only a single line of traffic - and I was about 200 m into the road. Even under current rules. Instead I limped home and got myself into the Baltic American clinic under a doctor whose stitching skills matched those of a blind five-year-old. (Have not used that clinic since.)

But living above some busy crossroads I have often observed/heard car crashes, some quite spectacular ones, though usually without injuries, and watched the ensuing chaos as the police slowly make their way to the scene, taking up to an hour. Now the police call outs are dropped five-fold (can someone express that in per cent?).

Unfortunately the number of small damages claims has increased by 10% compared to the same period in the past. Could be fraud, but could also be little accidents where people reverse into their own houses/garden fences which they did not previously report? The insurance companies will soon develop new rules to deal with this.

Minimum Income Standards UK

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a fine think tank, has brought out a report which estimates the amount of money people need per week to live (not survive, live). A minimum income standard is defined by the respondents to the survey: 'A minimum standard of living in Britain today includes, but is more
than just, food, clothes and shelter. It is about having what you need
in order to have the opportunities and choices necessary to participate
in society'. Which is all that social inclusion is about.

The amounts are frightening, especially when you consider that the housing costs included are rent rather than the huge mortgages many young people have these days. A pensioner couple needs 201.49 GBP per week excluding rent (apparently pensioners who get pensions credit reach this level); a couple with 2 children needs 557.03 GBP per week (excluding rent!), including a whacking 187 GBP for childcare. That's an astronomical amount, and probably far from the highest amount you could pay for childcare.

The rent amounts are between 64 and 69 quid for these two groups. The former may not have a mortgage, many of the latter probably do, and how much are the mortgage repayments on an average 100 k home? Of which there are not that many any more.

Terrifying!

New vehicles for Vilnius police

Vilnius bobbies don't have it easy - it's really difficult getting round the old town to scenes of crime fast, what with the roads often blocked with traffic, or crowds of often elderly tourists slowly shlepping round the town.

Already they have those BMW covered motorbikes (though I have not seen one recently - but then they were often sitting opposite a flat in which I don't now live), push bikes, and horses. Now they have a new toy to play with - two Segways costing 20,000 LT each (6,000 Euros), travelling at a speed of up to 20 km per hour. (Photo from Lietuvos Rytas).

As a Vilnius taxpayer I wonder whether this is the best use of my resource...They could have bought 10 good push bikes for that, and got their force fit in passing! Certainly one of the lads on the photie could do with using a bike instead. A few days ago I saw one in action just outside my house - together with a bobby on a bike, more or less dawdling along - but then bobbies spend much of their time just being visible. I wonder if Segways are safer on icy pavements in winter than bikes?

Young Georgian Men

Here's a lovely little film made by the 18-year-old cousin of one of our interpreters. Yes, the page is in Georgian, but if you see the two darker grey words at the bottom of the frame, and click on the right-hand one, the film will download, and it has subtitles in English.

I suspect it rather accurately reflects the lives of young Georgian men, and some of the children, as well as the school... which looks oddly familiar. It's only about 15 minutes or so. Check it out!

Tbilisi Horticulture

Rustaveli Avenue, the main street in Tbilisi, has recently undergone much renovation. Raised flowerbeds have appeared on both sides off the road, though in some places the work seems to have been abandoned. Strangely, those opposite the parliament actually contain many flowers, and even some standard roses - Rose Revolution and all that....In other places they seem to have chucked turf onto the flowerbeds and left it to get on with it. Die, mainly. Some automated watering systems have now appeared, but, as a former horticulturalist, I suspect that they will not do much good to turf that is dead.

Now here (story came out in June) it tells us that Israel has donated a 400-year-old olive tree to the city. Full with symbolism, of course. My horticultural heart hangs heavy.

Apart from the sense of transplanting a tree of that age, it's not really wonderful to do so in the middle of the growing season. And olive trees are vulnerable to frost below minus 10. Last winter it reached minus 15. In a country full of war rhetoric, what will be the symbolism of a dead olive tree?

A summer of discontent?

The Mail has its knickers in a twist over strikes by council workers, calling it a 'summer of discontent'. In memory of the 'winter of discontent' of which my son is a product. Er, well, not quite the winter, but he arrived during it. It was not a happy time what with petrol shortages, cleaning at the hospital down to a minimum (imagine a maternity hospital, blood all over the place....).

The Mail suggests that rubbish will be uncollected and schools will be shut. The latter of course being quite unusual in the summer....It also says that public sector workers have enjoyed an '11-year bonanza under New Labour'. Eh? Whenever did the public sector get anything from the government? Ok, so I left it in 2001, but I can never remember getting pay rises even matching, never mind exceeding inflation.

Eeeek!

This is what I saw when I stepped into the bath first thing this morning.

No, I did not scream. Mainly because I thought it was a baby turtle (we have them here) and I felt all warm and motherly inside.

Then I noticed it's thin, hairy legs! Does the photo reflect my trembling hand?

But what can you do when you are naked? Crush the thing? There would be oodles and oodles of blood. Take it outside? Not until I'm dressed.

So I cowered and showered at one end of the bath and it clung to the wall at the other end.

But you should have heard me swear at it as I carried it outside on, very luckily, an old Guardian I had left lying around. 'You are not going to climb off this paper, so you are not!'. And it did not. And now I am safe.

But what the heck is it?

Running round Tbilisi

My usual Saturday run, a bit earlier to escape the heat....

• said 'gamarjoba' to a young orthodox priest at the end of my road. Like most such priests he wore his woolly bunnet pulled down to the eyebrows. Gives them all a slightly scary look. He replied with a gesture I could not quite work out. Did he bless me or did he tell me to pass behind his back so I would not interrupt his communion with the wee church on the hill?
• spotted a couple in matching grey t-shirts on their way to their exertions? Or on the return? Or was the walk their exertions? Not a drop of sweat to be seen.
• having run up the hill almost to the late Pataarkatsishvili's glass palace found that the set of steps I usually descend on has been removed, and only a hill of scree left. What's the point of that? They don't want pedestrians near there? So I had to run back down and find another, newly installed set of stairs. It will save the climb in the future, but also the cardiovascular stuff....
• saw a tiny puppy in the middle of a road which is rarely used (thankfully). It looked very lost and depressed. I stroked it, like you stroke a raw egg, and it did not even wag its little tail. Then again, it's not so good here for little dogs to trust people too much.
• reached the new President's palace (the palace, I mean, not the president) from the other side, and found that a set of stairs going down from that side have been closed. I could have climbed over the fence, but seeing as they were covered in rubbish and at each landing had two large open manholes, quite apart from me being unable to see their end, I gave them a miss. Instead had a chance to observe the extraordinary design on the side of the building (the other side is not finished). It's kind of a mixture of what looks like wire mesh and (wooden?) cladding, going up and down in angular waves, with a star-shaped pattern throughout it all. Really difficult to explain! What with all those security people around I did not like to take a photo. Bits of this building seem to be working already. In front of it,overlooking the town, is a modern family house, but I'm not sure if that's for the president, or if it belongs to someone else who would have been very stubborn not to sell the land for the presidential arrangements.

Talking of security guards, the ones at my ministry, at ambassador's residences and elsewhere have new uniforms. A pale green shirt with dark green trousers with a pale green stripe going down the side of them. Makes them look a bit like part of a band.

Plagiarism

The, apparently 'celebrity', psychiatrist Dr Raj Persaud has been suspended from practising as a shrink for three months due to plagiarism in articles he had published in the media (it seems he appears regularly on TV, though perhaps not this summer).

Three things come to mind: Why does plagiarism affect a person's ability to deal with people with mental illness, or, for that matter, to carry out surgery or whatever? The feeling seems to be that because he has been dishonest here, he'll be dishonest to his patients. I suppose he could then tell people that these drugs are better than the others, and collect a fee or a holiday from a drugs company. But he would be far from the only one now, wouldn't he? I would have thought that he might never be able to publish certainly a learned article, and maybe even any books he writes might be looked at more critically than normal, but the impact on patient care? It would be good to have a survey of people with mental health problems, eg his patients, to see what they think about this.

The other thought is that he 'gets done' for three months for plagiarism, how long should someone get who leaves a scalpel in a patient, cuts off the wrong leg, or interferes with a patient?

And finally, I wonder how much training people get in medical schools on writing essays and articles? Do they do any research as students, and are they told about plagiarism? A friend of mine had to retake some of his MA exam following an accusation of plagiarism - that's after two years of study, when he had failed to transfer references into the summary he had written of a paper. My own university (the Open University) is extremely hot on plagiarism, and certainly at Masters level, if not earlier, you learn very quickly a) to quote like crazy, and b) to label every reference, whether it is a direct quote or whether you say 'as Mr X argues'. It's a pain in the neck to do, but it does really cover the student against any accusation that they stole someone else's laurels. In this case I wonder if it was intentional (though much mention has been made of a whole sentence, by a different author, in which one word was changed; I mean, really!), or whether Dr Persaud was just slapdash.

Will he ever get anything scientific publish again? If you were a journal editor, would you take his work?

What to do about incompetence?

In the consulting world we usually work on contracts, some are short, some are middling, some a long (I like the long ones which go with intermittent work). We have lots of beneficiaries in different countries, and lots of clients who employ us. Some of these clients have a separate contract for every bit of work - I have four with one company for whom I worked for a total of 5 weeks. So for new clients it can be difficult to know what someone's quality is like. The EU requires a document for every bit of consultancy showing that the person actually worked there, or at least had the contract. Does not ask for a quality certificate - a copy of the contract is sufficient. I must have nearly 30 of them - what a paperchase! Imagine, say, 8 bids being submitted, each with three experts, and each has 30 documents = that's 720 documents the EU needs to check; and they do check them! (There are other consultancy secrets but I won't go into them).

So then it happens that people are sacked from projects or leave them under a cloud. I know at least 3, two of whom was sacked and another 'was' resigned. Two of these I know have been appointed to other projects as 'the expert' as part of the project bid. When I know that before the bid goes in, but the person is already firmly engaged, what can I do? Hope and pray?

Safety in Tbilisi

Personally I think Tbilisi is perfectly safe for a person to walk around alone. I've been on the underground, in taxis, in buses, never a problem. I'm kind of conscious of safety, and if I feel that someone is following me, I just stop and let them pass. (Maybe one day that will backfire....).

On the weekend I was warned about walking around alone, by a young man and his mother. The lad had walked up to the TV tower, as described here, and was mugged on the way, being caught from behind with something around his neck. He describes himself proudly as of 'Army fitness' (after I had said that 'oh, but I'm a tough strong person and I can defend myself'...). Hmmmm. But then young men are more often the victim of crime than older persons. Now these people will be putting this story about. Did not share with them the many times I go running alone in obscure corners of Tbilisi!

Funny then, that the only time I was, a little bit, attacked, as described here, it was one of the rare occasions when I was not walking around alone, but distracted by having someone in my company.

Foreigners, especially Murricans, Tbilisi is perfectly safe. Though if you flash what you have then you might be more vulnerable, as you would be anywhere....

Racism in Vilnius (2)

I thought I'd publish the comment, by most probably a Lithuanian (name, knowledge of English), on the previous post on racism in Vilnius to let you see that I am not just imagining things.

Care in the community, Georgian style?

Near the Health Ministry today I was crossing the road with a colleague, when suddenly I felt a sharp nip in the elbow. I turned round, and saw some guy. Some people seemed to be telling him off. Strange.

We went along the road for quite a while, and finally my colleague found a shop she was looking for. She went in, I waited outside. Spotted the guy walking along the road in my general direction. Contemplated going into the shop for cover, but thought, sod it, I can defend myself.

The strangest thing happened. He came near me, and was really afraid of me (for good enough reason, perhaps, though I don't thump people all that often...). You know how dogs are when they are afraid of someone - they sidle around them, keeping an eye on the person, and then belt off into the distance. That's exactly what this guy did! I was under a tree, he went so close, sideways, along the building that I thought he'd break a window, and then shot off. I know we all have our identity issues, some of us more so than others, but I wondered if he thought he was a dog? I also wonder if he nipped me because I had accidentally invaded his personal space.

More to the point, wasn't it lucky he didn't have a knife? I wonder who takes care of him.

Number of children in poverty rises

....again in the UK, says the Guardian here. Actually, I'd heard about it yesterday, so the Grauniad, which should have its finger on the pulse, is a wee bitty late. The UK government is now well off its target of reducing child poverty by half (from 33%!!!) by 2010. In addition the number of pensioners living in poverty in the UK has risen by 300,000 to 2.5 million pensioners (and 2.9 million children, plus their parents presumably). Adults in poverty are stated to be 5.3 million, which presumably includes pensioners. So the total, of 8.3 million people in poverty, represents about 14% of a population of 60 million. That's without housing costs; if these are included, the figures may well be more.

The UK is the fifth richest country in the world. It has a 'socialist' government.

There are data, and data, and data showing the negative impact on childhood poverty on the lives of children, and their children, and their children. Does anyone pay attention to these?

The good news....

....is that the path up to Tbilisi TV tower, past the Mamadaviti (St David's Church) has been renovated. It is vastly, but vastly better, with handrails, cobbled paths, steps....I'd hate to think of the poor folk who had to carry the cobbles up there.

The bad news is that just at St David's Church there's a gap, currently being worked on, and essentially you have to walk up a storm drain, with a very scary little set of steps to get you out of it. I thought that only the most athletic people would attempt this, and I would not want to run the hash up here, what with some of the folk not far off the three-score and ten. Then I spotted a lot of young folk on the path above this gap, and you know what young Tbilisi women are like - all high heels and glitter. And they had done it! (I watched some of them going back down). So, no excuses for anyone!

Once you've bridged the gap, and have got to the top, it would appear that there is a further, nicely put together path which takes you all around a valley and back into town. Quite a long walk, I would think, but most of it downhill. And there are picnic spots and exercise areas. Lovely idea. Hope they stay unvandalised and tidy for a while.

At the top, behind the TV tower, there's now a fenced-in leisure park. (The photo does not entirely capture the tastelessness of it. And why are the welcome flags in all languages but Georgian?) I have a feeling it might belong to the late Mr Paatarkatsishvili, and of course there's trouble with his will. So the park is locked up and totally deserted. Mind you, so is most of that area. I walked for four hours, from my flat, up past the TV tower, to a fancy new housing development way out in the countryside, up to a ridge, near which I found the start of another large building in the middle of no-where (see photo) and back down again. After 3.5 hours I met another walker.....but boy, it was soo cold up there! And this is June, in Tbilisi!

Noticed that the cows wear bells made from piston-heads, and very tuneful they were, too. There's a use for everything.

Don't call it Night

Actually, this book by Amos Oz is already 12 years old, first published in 1996. I just came across it somewhere, whilst looking for family birthday presents (she says, rapidly wracking (sp?) her brain, is there anyone she's forgotten recently?).

It's a leisurely kind of book, set in one long summer in a town in Israel, claimed back from the desert - and perhaps the desert will reclaim it in the future. Nothing much goes on in the town, except that a teenager died of drugs, his father, living abroad wants to start a residential rehabilitation centre.

The book is narrated by a couple, with him, Theo, aged around 60, and her, aged around 45; they narrate it directly, first person singular, or it is told through their eyes. But it always takes a while to work out in each chapter who is telling the story. In passing it looks back at their lives, and the lives of others. There are many, many dramatis personae (listed in more than two pages at the end of the book), though the drama itself flows along in a very low-key approach. Things happen, resistances are met, interest is lost, the summer goes on, the school holidays start, but it all seems very calm underneath. Occasionally peripheral characters suddenly get a great role, and spurt out their life stories in a way that reminds of Beckett's Lucky in 'Waiting for Godot'. In some ways it reminds me of Zeruya Shalev's books, using the same narrative style. It's quite different from Oz's other books, though it does also have humour, again in a very low-key way.

It's a nice read, and lovely in the way it describes small-town life in Israel. I just don't think as 'out-of-town' being desert. Also a slim volume and very recommendable for reading on the plane or in a hospital bed.....

Sometimes I'm really embarrassed....

about the country I live in. Lithuania, anti-semitic? No, not a country that in its spring carnival has people dressing up as Jews (and Roma people), and where in some towns anti-semitism is almost encouraged (Siauliai)....

It seems now that one or two elderly Jews might be prosecuted for war crimes. I say 'might' because the story is from the Jewish Chronicle and it does not actually say a prosecution is pending. It 'just' says that the Lietuvos Aidas newspaper has called for Fania Branstovski to be put on trial for war crimes, on account that as an anti-Nazi partisan she committed crimes against Lithuanians (but what if those Lithuanians were Nazis? It's not unheard of in Lithuania, not even today.). Lietuvos Aidas is a bit of a funny newspaper, I think. Has an extremely basic website, and I could have sworn that one of its journalists, Sigitas Geda, has collaborated with the Jewish composer Anatolijus Senderovas over one or two pieces, quite some time ago.

Not sure how much of this is smoke without fire. The embassy in London has said that Ms Branstovsky may be invited as a witness in a case involving Soviet partisans alleged to have carried out a massacre in the village Kaniukai. Two other people, both of whom live abroad and may well have done so for many decades, are in fear of being prosecuted. One of these is the former chairman of Yad Vashem. Apparently he is reluctant now to return to his home town. But, given that many of his relatives may have been killed in this home town, what actual feeling would he have for it anyway.

I think I've met Ms Branstovsky. If anyone were to prosecute her I suspect it might cause quite a few political waves...Then again, the massacre....we don't let off concentration camp guards just because of age. I don't know - it's really difficult.

You cannot quite imagine this sort of thing happening in Germany, can you?

Tone's back....

Some lovely articles on Tony Blair's return to Westminster here, and here, and here.

If you are into equality for women

you might wish to consider signing this petition for a female leader for the EU. Thanks to Wu Wei for finding it.

Then again, is there the talent? The wonderful Grybauskaite from Lithuania should be president of Lithuania, not the EU....

Taking care of Her Majesty's Subjects

Bit surprised to get an email from a colleague, forwarded from a friend of hers, of Foreign Office travel advice in Georgia. It's something to do with demos at the opening of Parliament on 10 June. We've survived the demos since last November, so we'll be ok.....Last time they phoned us the day after the teargas.

But why this means of message transmission? Enquiry to the Embassy reveals that they have a system of 'wardens' who then pass the message on to their 'parish'. On FCO advice, apparently.

Forgive me if this reminds me of 'Dad's Army' - what was the name of that ARP warden? And how do they know that all Brits are reached? I don't know who is my warden, or in which parish I am. Doing things on the cheap again, and getting other people to do their work.

But really, is it rocket science to set up a British resident's mailing list on the computer which includes everyone who has email (most people must do, surely). Someone registers at the Embassy, you pop their name into the mailing list. End of story. Setting it up in the first place might take half a day once....they don't have time for this?

Glad I'm not paying their salaries.

Fleamarket Chic

Dinner last night at the cafe Pur Pur,in Gudiashvili Square, somewhere to the back of Tbilisi Town Hall.It's a beautiful little square, with trees in the middle of it, and this building beside it. In which the restaurant is not. Sharp-eyed viewers will notice that the building is surrounded by a construction fence. Well-informed Tbilisi residents will realise that this will be another charming old building about to bite the dust (one day soon I will blog about capitalism and building preservation).

The restaurant is on another side of
the square. Don't ask me which side, I did not look at where the sun
was when I entered it. It's in an old building, with a pale brown
door, and in the summer the windows are open. Seeing as it does not
have a sign, this is the best I can do for you.

Inside it is fleamarket chic. The
stairs, ancient and unrenovated, are covered by a carpet, the tables
and chairs are a jumble, and the tables are thus positioned that they
are in front of the walls and not of the windows. Which is a shame if
you want to see what's happening outside (which I like). They are
also rather crammed in. But it's quite charming and characterful. Though the tables
for two are so narrow that loving couples can pick each others' noses
without leaning over the table. A nice table for 4 was defended by
the waiting staff with their lives against groups of 2 people, with
the result it remained empty all evening. I managed to wrestle out of them a table for three to seat the two of us, but it was with some difficulty. The proportions of tables
and chairs in relation to each other are such, at least in our case,
that if you are a woman wearing a low-cut outfit, the table preserves
your modesty. Or maybe my friend is just small. The music is of the
'Je ne regrette rien' cafe-music style.

You don't always want to see what's
happening outside, though. While I was waiting for my friend,
suddenly I heard a dog screaming and screaming and screaming. Turned
out that the dog police was taking it away. Now I did not see the dog
they had, but suspect strongly it was the very decrepit-looking dog I
saw on entering the restaurant, who, to be fair, would probably not
have been looking forward to much enjoyment in his life. So it
probably was a kindness. But the screaming will stay with me for a
while. I suppose shooting it in the street, while kinder to the dog,
might not be entirely acceptable. The way the restaurant staff
reacted made me wonder if they had called the dog police?

It was nice that the clientele was all
Georgian, apart from us – I'm not that hot on expat places. Given
that the waiting staff responded in Russian to English requests it
makes sense really. Not intended for the expat market, maybe. Though I do rather like bog-standard Georgian food which this place did not really supply.

People had raved about the food –
especially the soups and the salads, so I tried a soup, a salad and a
main course. The soup, a cold yoghurty cucumber and radish soup, was
all right. Far from a large portion, served in a very large bowl, and
perhaps more chunky than was strictly necessary. If the yoghurt had
been a bit diluted it would not have been a catastrophe. Not sure I
spotted the mint that it was also supposed to contain.

The salad, green leaves with cucumber
and tomato, was ordinary. The dressing was nice, and there were loads
of green leaves, well washed, so we got our chlorophyll for the
evening. But nothing special.

Our main courses – my friend had the
trout, I had the salmon. The poor wee trout...its mum must have not
taken good care of it, so it swam away, and before it knew it, it had
been caught. Much like the dog. Except Master Trout was caught in his
infancy. Or maybe mum had made love to a sardine. With an
accompaniment of something green and shredded carrot it was the
perfect Atkins' meal, though perhaps a bit thin on protein.

My salmon, on spinach came with 4
beautiful new potatoes (n Georgia at the moment we have the most
beautiful new potatoes I have ever seen). So I could afford to pass
two on to my starving friend. The salmon – I'm not convinced it
was salmon, more like sea trout – arrived in two small pieces, smothered in
something rich and white.

The bread was fairly ordinary white and
slightly brown bread, not a lavash in sight (though there was some on
the menu accompanying a different salad). And the service, I hate to
say it, but we waited for our cappuccinos so long that I had
fantasies of someone rushing to Brazil to pick the coffee beans. The
wine was exceptionally cheap. Then again....it reminded me of the
wine I sometimes buy loose.....

The place reminds me of the Art Bridge
in Abovian Street in Yerevan, belonging to an expat Armenian woman.
The atmosphere is similar, sort of slightly Bohemian, full of expats,
Armenian Bohemians and young go-getting things. The Art Bridge did
not change its menu in the three years I was in Armenia, with the
menus becoming more and more stained. It was good for teas and cakes
(oh, the carrot cake!) but less good for main courses. PurPur place
also has potential for a lot of atmosphere, but last night it seemed
rather subdued, with people huddled quietly in little corners
everywhere. Not sure that is entirely characteristically Georgian....

It was nice that at least part of the
menu was seasonal. Let's hope they keep going for fresh produce, and
that the cooking may become a little more inspired.

Drugs Problems

It would appear that members of the
Georgian parliament get drug tested before they are admitted to it
(following the recent election), Rustavi2 reports. Bit unfortunate that a leader of an
opposition part was found to have traces of opium in his blood. He
blames it on a codeine-based medicine he had taken the day before. I
don’t know anything about pharmacology, so who knows if codeine
isn’t really opium. Funny thing is, though, that codeine-based
medicines, like Sudafed, are illegal in Georgia. Personally, had I
been the politician, I would have kicked up a fuss and blamed the
government for planting it on me. This is Georgia!

Budget airline

So, off I tootled to Tbilisi, on the
new direct flight from Vilnius, run by flylal (Lithuanian airways of
whom I may still be an owner, as a Lithuanian taxpayer).

Could do better, I think. It only takes
about 3 hours to fly to Tbilisi, much the same time as it would take
to fly from Vienna to Tbilisi. I don’t understand geography, really
I don’t…..Though I have to admit now (and I'm surprised) that a ticket from Vienna to Tbilisi in July is double the price of the Vilnius to Tbilisi flight. I guess I've seen what I don't pay for in Lithuanian, like....

....the service quality. In
Vilnius airport only a newsagent’s was open when I arrived at 9.30
pm; there are coffee machines, but the chocolate I asked for came
without chocolate. The lady at information had obviously been trained
by the Soviets and shouted at me, so no joy or compensation there.

The face of the passport control was
tripping her up, and she caused some of the Georgians endless delays.
Then we sat around and waited – near a bar, which was closed. And
waited.

Eventually we were let on the plane, a
Boeing 737 (very old model). In my row (7d-f), the seats would not
recline and my joy at being alone and able to stretch out was soon
overcome by the realisation that the arm rests moved sideways, but
not upwards. Missing bits of plastic had been replaced by sticky
tape. Naturally, there was no in-flight entertainment – it really
must be a very old plane. There was not even anything to read in the
seat pocket apart from the safety instruction card.

Then I was horrified that once again we
had to pay for food. Lithuanian has gone through phases – 7 years
ago there was a meal (not sure if it was ever hot), then we had to
pay, then we got a bun, now we have to pay again. For what is
available on the menu – but, in true Soviet style, not everything
is available. And frankly, the quality...

Well, I never

Never realised until just now that Puerto Rico is 'a selfgoverning commonwealth in association with the United States, with the chief of state being the President of the USA'. But thanks to Mrs Clinton, I now know. They are run by a governor and, like the US, a house of representatives and a Senate. The US has responsibility over what in mainland US are federal matters, and the Island bodies look after the rest.

They have no representation in the US government (and some tax exemptions - but it sounds awfully like 'taxation without representation'?).

Which makes me think about 'West Side Story'....'I love to be in America', sung by Puerto Ricans in New York....

A fate that may befall Cuba in time. God help it.

Megalomaniac!

Never one for taking one step at a time, Blair - who appears to have failed to create peace in the Middle East, and whose ambitions to become President of Europe look unlikely to be fulfilled, now wants to spend the rest of his life (he's 55, father still alive, potentially long life ahead) 'uniting' the world's religions. For this he's launching a 'faith foundation' in New York on Friday. He wants it to do things like getting the faiths together to provide bed nets for malaria, that sort of thing. It's probably safer than asking them to provide condoms against AIDS.....

Is he looking for a sainthood? If so, who would he expect to provide it - the Pope, Islam, the Jewish community, the Dalai Lama?

That's three major ideas in less than a year. Wonder how long this interest will last...

I should not let him rattle me, should I? But he's a dangerous person to be near power.

Rising food costs

We've all noticed that food costs have increased tremendously recently. It's a catastrophic issue for people who've lived at subsistence level (unless they grow all their own food, and very few people in the world do that nowadays), but even in Europe it is having a major impact on family budgets, as this article and this story confirms.

The second story, a food diary of a single parent from Guildford, reminds me of the time when I was a low-paid single parent from Scotland - quite a long time ago. There was a time when I could feed both of us on 20 quid a week (that's 20 years ago with a boy of roughly the same age as this lady's child; before that we lived on even less). She lists the meals she and her 7-year-old eat in the course of a week. While it says something about the food, it actually says more about family interactions.

I'm not sure if maybe the mum is trying to lose weight - but she hardly ever eats the same foods as her daughter, and misses out breakfast. Even when they both have, it would seem, fresh chicken, mum and daughter eat different things. Think of the work that involves - I wonder if they actually eat together in the evenings at least?

I suspect that the daughter is a bit of a fussy feeder, what with her having pancakes every morning (says she, who's most fussy about her Kellogg's cornflakes every morning - but if I were skint, I'd be very happy indeed to have a bowl of warming porridge). The daughter seems to get two cooked meals a day - eg steak and chips for Sunday lunch, roast chicken for dinner. Is that not a bit excessive? There's also much processed food, like fish fingers, chicken nuggets, chicken burgers...That's despite mum buying a chicken every week, and treating it, it seems, much the same way as I did (roasting it one day, using the next bits of meat for different things - lasting me a couple of days, boiling up the carcase - which makes lovely soup) - but most of it goes into mum's lunches. They seem to have meat twice a day most days. Would not have thought that was necessary.

It would be good if the daughter could be persuaded off her nuggets and fingers, and they could try other food. Many other kinds of meat, eg mince, stews, can be extended with the addition of beans (even porridge oats in the case of mince, though that becomes a bit serious...) - though of course these do not lend themselves to being taken to the office (but maybe the office has a microwave?). It's not necessary to eat meat every day - my son was raised on a vegetarian wholefood diet for 3 years of his early life, and his development did not seem to suffer. She could learn about complementary protein, which vegetarians are familiar with, where grain and peas,beans, or lentils (or milk products) interact to (somehow) create more protein. Unfortunately leguminous foods do have side effects.... I don't know how many years I took cheese sandwiches to work for my lunch (oh god, they were awful - brown bread and a slab of cheese, so dry that they would glue themselves to the roof of the mouth. But needs must!).

It's great that the family has an allotment (at the bottom of their garden - what luxury!). They should be able to grow almost all their vegetables, and freeze them, or bottle them, for the winter. Leeks, and some cabbages, store themselves quite happily in the garden in the winter - as long as you can get them out of the ground!

A first?

Mr Saakashvili says that Mr 'Kaczynski is Georgia's hero' (on account of the latter stating that Georgia is where the borders of the free world are going to be). As reported on Polskie Radio. Will we have a Kaczynski Avenue next, or will it even replace the President George W Bush avenue to Tbilisi airport?

Saakashvili may have been the first to make such a bold statement about the little Polish president. How many Poles would agree?

Lenin only got as far as Lüdenscheid

Lüdenscheid is a dead-, dead-provicincial town in darkest provincial Germany, quite close to where I grew up (in a virtually identical location). When was Lenin in Lüdenscheid?

He was not. It's an autobiographical book by Richard David Precht, a German philosopher journalist type of person, who wrote a book of this title - and it seems a film based on the book will come out on 5 June. But it's archetypally German, full of references to a particular time and place; not sure how marketable it will be outside Germany.

Precht was born in Solingen 9 years and 29 days after me; Solingen is not so far from where I grew up, and if he describes this as 'provincial' he does not know 'really provincial'! His parents were left-leaning, to the degree of communism , which in the 1960s and particularly the 'terrorist' 70s was not necessarily the best move. But since his father worked in private industry, rather than for the state, it was ok.

Given his parents' left-leaning sympathies the family was involved in all sorts of leftish activities, like the 'Naturfreunde' which seems to be a leftish-leaning environmental organisation, various communist outfits, but also with Terre des Hommes, through whom the family was one of the first in Germany to adopt Vietnamese war orphans. The children's reading material was strictly censored (oh God, don't remind me!) though with a slightly different emphasis than my censorship was - though it seems both he and I were not allowed cartoons. The musical tastes tended to be anti-establishment, and when he was allowed to bring an LP to school to listen to during art lessons, it lasted a whole two minutes. The mother toyed with the idea of the 'Summerhill' style of raising her family, but only in as far as 'her nerves could stand it'. Nevertheless, it seems that things like cleaning teeth, clean and unrepaired clothes, and behaving well in school did not have the highest priority in the family; on the contrary, the parents seemed to be quietly pleased when bolshy young Richard stood up to the sometimes very elderly teachers (I should have tried that - I would have been dead!). This made it difficult for the Precht children to fit in with the average Solingen provincial crowd - the mother's way of dressing the children, often in cast-offs regardless of the gender of the previous wearer did not help either (I notice that on the cover photo the about 6-year-old Richard appears to be wearing a girl's vest).

He writes about the confusion caused in his leftist worldview when the Baader-Meinhof group and its associates started murdering people, and when, at the end of the 70s all sorts of people, former commies or otherwise, suddenly moved to the Green end of politics.

I can relate to a lot of the feel of that period, even though by 1975 I was out of Germany. Some of the aspects of the upbringing were similar, like the absence of a TV, the censorship of reading materials and music (though I would not have dared reading or listening to anything that might not have been approved), the move to dull grey houses in the 'burbs, the music lessons (despite appearances to the contrary, his mother was surprisingly bourgeois).

It's quite an interesting book, though I find it a bit hard work trying to understand all the ins and outs of German politics; quite often he goes into the politics to such a degree that I wonder if he is padding things out a little - after all, the book was supposed to be about him. I also wonder how the present-day generation of young Germans will be able to relate to this rather interesting and exciting period he is describing, which is now long-gone. The rot set in with the year after mine at school, when the young ladies all became very conservative.....

Lenin and Lüdenscheid? It seems that Lüdenscheid was the furthest west point reached by 'Young Pioneers' type camps....Never knew it had that in it!

The bubble's bursting?

Headline in today's 'Lietuvos Rytas' newspaper suggests that Lithuanian house prices might fall by as much as 30% - already, it seems, newly built apartments are being sold with a 'discount' of 20%.

That was a problem waiting to happen. Prices had shot up in the last five years to a level which had no relation to people's incomes. Whole new neighbourhoods are mushrooming all over Vilnius - in a country where the population is shrinking. Or perhaps the population of Vilnius is growing?

Maybe now houseprices will connect a bit with reality. Bit of a pain for those of us who have mortgages attached to our homes; let's hope we get through this - eventually things will bottom out.

Suitable books?

A British friend has just been admitted to hospital here in Lithuania - nothing life threatening. Since it's a bowel complaint grapes are probably not suitable prezzies. I looked at my books - she has a different style of reading from me, I suspect - homed in on Donna Leon (of whom a new episode is on German TV tonight!).

'Blood from a stone' and 'Death in a Strange Country' I decided were perhaps not the most suitable titles, under the circumstances.....

-ism in Lithuania (Chapter X of many...)

Today's '-ism is once again 'racism'. Story in today's 'Lietuvos rytas' newspaper about allegedly (I say 'allegedly', they don't) illegally resident Chinese building workers in Lithuania, who appear to have taken over some empty houses in one of the little garden colonies surrounding Vilnius.

The boss of the migration department comments that currently few Chinese building workers are here legally; most of the arrivals are chefs (must go to a Chinese restaurant!). The worst thing is, he says, that several people arrive with one passport. The faces of the people of this nationality are similar ('they all look the same to me, guv') and therefore it's hard for the immigration workers to tell them apart.....

What they do, he says, is that one guy arrives and is here legally, and then sends his passport home. Shortly another person arrives with the same passport.

Forgive me for being a bit puzzled. Surely Chinese people still have their passports stamped into the country and out of the country. So, if a guy sends his passport back, and someone else uses it, does that not mean that it is missing a 'stamp out'? Would that not ring alarm bells?

Apparently migrant workers are becoming a bit of a political story these days. God help them.

My life as an 'Aryan'

I'm not talking about myself.....though 'thanks' to Hitler's efforts to get all Germans to list their ancestors several generations back, in case a Salomon or a Rebekkah popped up, I know I am one (and do I care? No, I do not).

Had an interested chat last night with my devoted reader Anne (you know who you are) about anti-semitism in Lithuania, and other anti-isms brought west by the population of the former 'East'. The levels of awareness of prejudice, even among very educated people, are quite appallingly low.

So it was with a bit of interest that at lunchtime I happened across a TV programme about Jerzy Czarnecki, a Galician Jew who fled Galicia during the war, Poland after the war, and after a long time ended up in Switzerland of which he is now a citizen (and possibly a professor for something). He survived thanks to false papers, and sympathetic Germans and Poles - yes, there are some.

In this programme he travelled back to his home village, Mosty Wielky near Lviv/Lvov/Lemberg and had a lot of conversations with a lot of people, who all appeared to be quite moved by what they talked about (though not half as much as he was). I was a bit astonished when the current owner of his family's former house welcomed him quite so effusively, given that there might have been a danger of him wanting the place back. But perhaps a TV camera helps. Given my experiences, though, of Eastern Europeans (I am sorry to say), I did wonder just how many of his interlocutors were genuinely feeling empathy with his situation, or whether, after he departed, they would say 'Good, there's another Yid gone'? (Freely adapting what protestant colleagues of mine in Scotland would say every time there was a funeral at the catholic church across the road....)

What if he had been black and poor?

Today's headline news in the UK is the story of a young barrister with an income of 500,000 GBP per year, living in Chelsea, who died in a gun siege - not clear whether he shot himself or the police shot him. There's a huge amount of debate about this case.

I wonder if he would have got as many column inches had he been a poor black man in East London?

Russian interest?

For some reason, the title of this blog has attracted a lot of debate from Russia here. I'm not sure why - there seems to be a lot of debate about 'good buy', 'good boy' and 'good bye'.

Ho hum. Guys, it's 'Good Buy, Lenin' because I'm thinking that in Russia these days you can buy anything, oil, fancy cars, houses, justice.....if you have the money, the law belongs to you! And this applies to many other post-Soviet countries.

Does anyone do any work around here?

Came home to Vilnius on Monday. Discovered that Thursday, 1 May, was a public holiday (don't think it has always been that in recent years), which meant that Friday was automatically also a public holiday (people work off this bridging day on a designated Saturday). On Saturday discovered that Monday is a public holiday because Mother's Day, 4 May, fell on a Sunday.

A 5-day weekend! That's really irritating when you come back here to see people, and all you get is holidays (though the person I really needed to see gave up a bit of her Thursday for me, which was nice).

Mr Algirdas Sysas, the chairman of the social affairs committee of the Parliament, and a guy who I respect enormously (what vision!), apparently was not too bothered about this, saying that Lithuanians work almost the longest hours in Europe, so this is ok.

Not sure that everyone works the longest hours in Europe - the military police opposite my flat usually deserts its posts not much after 1pm on a 'working' Saturday.

Rescuing Sri Lankan Puppies?

On Sunday the Observer had a story about some UK-based kennel worker being bitten by a rabid puppy, aged 8 weeks, which had just been imported from Sri Lanka. The dog is dead, the worker is ok after her injections.

It makes you wonder, though, about the priorities of people. Yes, dogs will not be treated will in Sri Lanka, as they are not in many countries in the world. The charity involved has provided UK homes for 40 dogs from Sri Lanka in 'recent years'. Consider the cost of freighting the dogs to the UK, quarantining and feeding them - never mind the carbon pawprint. Wouldn't it make more sense to put random dogs down, and spend that money on the children or elderly of Sri Lanka, many of whom were affected by the Tsunami of a few years ago?

Schengen

We've really made it! Arriving in Vilnius yesterday I was dismayed when I found myself on the wrong side of the bus to be the first to reach passport control at the airport - my regular sport on my journey home, and one in which I usually win.

Turns out that for Schengen flights there is no passport control any more.....which explains also why the flight left from a passport-free end of Vienna airport (after I had trundled through their passport control to get to the usual departure gate I then found I had to re-enter Austria to leave for Vilnius). Life's so easy now....

Pets, Tbilisi style

Georgians are not that good at pets. They have dogs, but often they are tied up, rarely are they trained, and many live and sleep in the streets. At least, I suppose it's better that dogs sleep in the streets than children or adults....

Bit of a surprise, though, wandering home along Gogebashvili the other night, to come across a group of youngsters with a bird of prey sitting happily on someone's hand. Not the sort of thing you'd expect to see in almost the middle of a European capital. But then you would also not expect to see roads paved with mud, houses without running water.....

Racism in Vilnius

See here on a South African singer of Indian origin, Berneen, being attacked (physically) in Vilnius. It's shocking, but does not surprise me.

Nothing's changed (3)

Now on page 110 of Figes' 'A People's
Tragedy'; he's been talking about the peasant situation for the last
xx pages. We are still in the 19^th century; he's obviously
filling in the background in great great detail.

He talks about the effect of schooling
on peasants, which is not always appreciated: 'Young men and
adolescents often verbally abuse their elders and even beat them'.
The UK, anno 2008? Not sure that in the UK education is necessarily the root cause of this, though....

He describes the peasant legal system
(customary law) of the 19^th century, which was unwritten.
Land and the flora and fauna on it was seen as belonging to those who
worked it, rather than to the landlord. So it was considered
perfectly all right to steal wood from the landlord, or poach on his
land. This reminds me of a study carried out by a friend on the
informal economy in Russia of the 21^st century, where it
was found that following privatisations, people were, to their
astonishment, prosecuted and thrown in prison for stealing from their
employer.

Figes talks about the market economy
being weak in areas of Russia which had no access to cities or major
railway lines. In 2005 I spotted an article in a Nizhny Novgorod
paper where farmers in remote villages had the crops, but no way of
getting them to the market.

Where's the progress?