Estonia is often presented as Lithuania’s archetypical competitor, and, judging from many media reports, it seems that the main goal for Lithuania is to be ahead of Estonia one day. Personally, I grew up with my dad’s stories from Tallinn, after he did an internship there in the 1970s, about how Estonia was more western in many ways. Access to …
Idyllic in Budapest
Margit island, Budapest (click on the image to enlarge it)
The most impressive sights in Seoul
It’s been a long time (3 years) since I went to Seoul, but, having found my guidebooks, notes and other things to lend them to my colleague, I realized that memory is fading fast, so I should record it now. The only blog entry I wrote about that trip .
Beautiful Central Lithuania
May has been an extremely busy month at my new job. I organized a seminar on doing business in Asia, worked as a discussant at a student conference, organized a visit of a group of academics from Indonesia, and gave two workshops for students on job search (how to write a CV and a letter of motivation). The last event …
Winter now and then
It is an unusually warm winter in Lithuania, and of course when holidays come people are discussing the absence of snow. In the meantime I’m slowly arranging some old photos, so I guess it’s a good excuse to share one from Sweden. In 2005 I went to Haparanda in the North of Sweden, where a Swedish family adopted me and …
Colorful fall in Vilnius
View from a hill in Užupis
Perfection of mini vacations in Nida
Some people were suspicious why the New Left 95 movement had its annual conference in Nida, which is a Lithuanian seaside resort. It was too far to go for one day, and an expensive place to be. But in fact, when the tourist season ends, prices drop in Nida, and even middle class Lithuanians can afford having a conference there …
Dubrovnik – the expensive urban and natural paradise (II)
First part . Outside of the Old Town, a picturesque fortification attracts not only tourists, but also the theater and cinema industries. It is also used for rock diving. On it, the official motto of the former republic, ‘freedom can’t be sold for the whole gold in the world’, is inscribed. The republic’s nobility (men only) elected their representatives to …
Dubrovnik – the expensive urban and natural paradise (I)
Visiting Dubrovnik for the first time got me asking why I never thought about going there before. I am not surprised why it attracts so many people – there is everything for every taste… except, perhaps, budget travel. The popular Croatian city rests on the remainders of the once-prominent Republic of Ragusa, which was known for its vibrant economic and …
Luxembourg’s treasures II: Vianden castle and chairlift
People go to Luxembourg to earn money or to buy cheap fuel – the rainy country is not a popular tourist destination. But people who already live there tend to travel quite a bit – travel inside the country, which has the highest GDP per capita in the EU, is obscenely cheap (EUR 1.3 to go by train or bus …