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.