I wanted to write about it long time ago. Why? Because it is an interesting and funny thing.

Roads in Lithuania are getting better and especially in a countryside because EU donates countryside’s regions more. I live in city Kaunas. It is a second largest city in Lithuania and it has, probably, the worst roads in the whole country. Once I was driving home relaxed from my mom’s house, listened to the music and suddenly bang! That bang was felt pretty badly from the inside of my Seat Leon. I step down my car and carefully looked around. There was a 50 centimetres deep hole! Can you imagine that? It was about one meter from a pavement. I know this must be not a surprise when you drive in Lithuania but damn(!), that was painful. People, because of that, have gathered some experience and now they usually drive in the middle of the road. This is unusual for the Western European but it helps to escape undesirable repair costs.

Another funny thing. People here don’t like to give the way on road. They don’t look at your turning signals at all. They think only about themselves.

For example. There is a traffic jam in the forepart and you have to cross that forepart from non traffic jam line. In a normal country you will get passed but not here. People don’t even want to think about that – they increase the speed and don’t intend to leave the gap. This actually makes me frustrating.

Parking. Parking in Lithuania is another unusual thing. If you have a nice car (or you might think that you have one) and want to show off you usually park in the disable parking place. It is funny to watch brand-new cars in the park place of the disables. Why to walk 50 metres to the shopping mall when you can walk 10 meters? No point – you see. One parking place is not usually enough for those chickens and they take two f them saying – ‘to avoid scratches’. Luckily our government started to punish such road riders but of course not enough because it is still happening.

Speeding. If you have the money – speed as much as you want because you can buy the immunity by simply giving a graft to the policeman. If you are inexperienced in this don’t worry – Lithuanian policeman will ask you about this himself. Probably, it is different with the foreigners but it is always the same with us – Lithuanians. Policemen like to narrate the morals about speeding and inappropriate driving after they catch you but at the end they always suggestively ask ‘What shall we do now?’. In their language it means : ‘Come on dude, just give us some money and get out of our car’. Well, they even negotiate.

Once, I saw a brand-new Mercedes CLS stopped by the police over my window. I saw an unlucky(or maybe not) driver going into the policemen car. After a few seconds one policeman step down from the car  speaking on the phone (it is prohibited in Lithuania for policemen during the work use the personal phones). After 20 seconds he came back and the Mercedes driver came out and drove away. Yeah, I thought he has a good uncle or friend in the authority. Believe it or not but I saw same situation with the same guy once again.

Government people cry about accidents in the roads (Lithuania is the most unsafe country for drivers) but they invest not enough in the facility. Just look what are the roads in Sweden. There is no chance to overtake in some of them and in Lithuania you can overtake everywhere and you can even make donuts on the bridge )). That’s crazy. I am very pessimistic about all this stuff but I would like to hope that after 20 years the situation will be better.

Some videos:

Should I greet new USA president? I don’t know…

I agree with opinion of mass that Obama will be a better president for the United States and he is going to sort out the US economy. Yes, probably he will and George Bush had to do it long time ago.  The US economy is the main economy in the World.

All right, let’s take a look at all this from political point of view.

When G.W. Bush was a US president Lithuania was accepted into NATO and received a non-visa entry for its citizens to USA.  Bush is a ‘Last action Hero’ and he wanted to help weaker countries. Let’s remember Georgia and Russia conflict: USA was among the first countries which condemn Russia’s military actions. Putin’s Russia used to threaten the Baltic states and other countries always even when the arguments were not really important. Putin’s Russia always likes to demonstrate its power over ex-occupied countries. I guess Putin wants to turn off the attention from domestic problems. OK and where was Bush? He was right behind the weaker countries and always supported them. Thanks to him.

What will Obama do? I think all these weak countries have lost the intercessor. Obama is more liberal then Bush and I don’t think he is going to be as tough as Bush regarding foreign affairs. Everything comes to an end sooner or later and I think the USA dominion in the World will weaken with Obama’s arrival and this is not good at all. Several dominions in the World are not good because it leads to the conflicts and instability. If there were no Putin and Russia were democratic, probably, there were no such predictions from my point of view but sadly it is. I still do not understand why Putin wants to mess up everything? Come on dude, we wanna live in peace.

Before the second World war Lithuania was a member of something similar what is NATO or UN now. Russia has invaded Lithuania in 1940. Guess, if that organization helped us? No, it didn’t because our country is too small and meaningless. Will the World let it happen again? I hope not.

The 1st in November is very different comparing to most Western Europe’s countries. In Western Europe most people celebrate the Halloween – the festival of masks and fear. Of course, the fear is also fun at Halloween.

Surprisingly, or maybe not, the Halloween is different in Lithuania. It is not a festival but the time of peace and accumulation to honour dead people. Lithuanians, mostly older people, do not understand any festivals at this day. This is not acceptable for them.

However, nowadays, youth want to follow Western habits and start celebrating the Halloween.

I might be odd but I would like to stay with our old habits then to follow Western culture.