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.