As the European Broadcast Union determines whether “Eastern European Funk,” in suggesting inequality between eastern and western Europeans, suffers from having political content, Lietuvos Rytas yesterday published an article by Andrius Užkalnis that argues a similar point of inequality, but from the entirely opposite direction. Užkalnis, the most famous Lithuanian living in England now that [...]
Continue reading about You are William the Conqueror, not Vilius the Vergas!
The Lithuanian economy is crumbling, and financial analysts are getting excited about GDP contraction that isn’t as bad as they imagined. There is even a webpage you can check to see if the crisis is still going on. And all of this is happening with a brand new government just sworn in, a government that [...]
I don’t have a lot of time this week for more fake analysis, but the second round of parliamentary elections is over, and the Seimas will be led by a centre-right coalition under Andrius Kubilius for the first time in almost a decade. It strikes me as obviously odd to, in wanting “change,” to vote [...]
Continue reading about Welcome to the centre-right Lithuania
I met yesterday afternoon with Monika Bončkutė, the correspondent to Lietuvos rytas and editor of Vakarai. We talked at Caffé Florian for over two hours (well, I did most of the talking), and she collapsed it all into a brisk little article that is now up on lrytas.lt. A more, how shall I say, pensive [...]
[This is a hastily assembled translation of the article, “Tolerantiški lietuviai — grėsmė senajai išeivijai” by Mykolas Gudelis, published in Vakarai. I’m providing the translation here for those (both who consider themselves Lithuanian and not) who care about these sorts of issues. The translation is reprinted here with permission from Vakarai. Personally, anyone who read [...]
Continue reading about Tolerant Lithuanians threaten sclerotic diaspora community
Kamarausko ‘Vilnius Synagogue’ (Wikipedia) I first heard of the situation regarding Dariaus Udrio resignation from LALB about a week ago. I was sad that he felt the need to resign, but I was more frustrated about the responses to his resignation, both in private emails forwarded to me and in public arenas. Once I saw [...]
After a day spent learning about 20th Century German history, my friends and I decided to lighten things up with a jaunt through the Tiergarten in Berlin, on our way to the Reichstag building in the summer of 2003. Rather surprisingly, while cutting across the heavily wooded space, we came upon a two Red Army [...]
Nothing sets off an identity crisis like a millennial jubilee! Lithuania continues to play the role of jittery bride in the run up to the celebrations of 2009. First, we’ve had the problems over the question of why citizens of the Republic Lithuania must be citizens of the Republic of Lithuania alone (the propagandized diaspora [...]
