Int'l Travel Notes, April 2025

Slightly personal and only seemingly OT, here's a bunch of thoughts from my trip to Lithuania and Montenegro

I’ve been travelling work-relatedly in the last couple of days, attending two conferences in Vilnius, Lithuania, and in Herceg Novi, Montenegro. I’ve never been to either of them, and while I won’t bore you with the minute details of my academic professional life (mostly so that you won’t think ill of me), here are some points to orient yourself about my trip and a few thoughts. Enjoy.

Briefly, my Itinerary

I took a plane to Copenhagen (from Norway) where I, for the first time, paid attention to the art™ on display—mainly because my daughter in 2nd grade recently had a reading assignment—by Norwegian artist Frans Widerberg (personal website). I’ve had layovers in Copenhagen before and never noticed them, but now that I’ve seen these…decorations, I cannot un-see them. Sigh.

As an aside, here’s what my 5th-grader does:

I’d prefer my daughter do a mural rather than one more of these ‘modern’ artists, but I digress. Back to my itinerary.

Vilnius, Lithuania (Wed.-Sat.)

I had an uneventful flight from Copenhagen to Vilnius, Lithuania (never been before) where, upon exiting the terminal building and heading for the bus stop, I noticed—everything was very clean, much cleaner than, say, many parts of Norway. Public buses were new, very clean, too, and so were literally all the streets I walked through on my way to the hotel.

What shocked me, albeit in a bad way, was that prices for most of what people would be able to eat and drink in restaurants were virtually indistinguishable from Western Europe (i.e., very high by ‘historical’ standards of, say, 15 years ago). If considered in light of, say, median incomes—check out a comparison of gross monthly earnings across Europe (Wikipedia) from when the below map was borrowed—you can clearly see how absurd this all is: even adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP; it makes Lithuanian salaries look better), I cannot explain why restaurants and bars in the city centre were so packed. Perhaps tourists.

Streets everywhere were clean like in Switzerland, the synagogue and Jewish museums didn’t need extra protection when I passed by on Saturday morning:

I suppose this has to do with two inter-related facts: the largest number of Moslem immigrants (Uzbekistan) does not exceed 10,000 in a country of little over 2.8m. And, secondly, with the very apparent notion that there’s hardly any non-Europeans seen on the streets in the city centre.

What one also sees, though, is a strong expression of Christianity, such as the Three Crosses on Bald Hill, which are illuminated at night. Now, I don’t know how performative vs. lived the Lithuanians’ faith is, but it is an obvious marker that distinguishes several East European countries from their western neighbours. That was also a thing I saw yesterday morning at 4 a.m. while going to the airport in Dubrovnik, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

So, Lithuania is a nice country, and its capital Vilnius is very safe, clean, and neat. One more thing to mention is that we also got a guided tour through the rebuilt Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, which doubles as the National Museum.

While the palace was destroyed in the 19th century, Lithuanians, upon restoration of their independence in 1990, undertook its reconstruction. It’s all well done, it’s up to very modern standards, and it doubles as the nat’l museum showing Lithuania’s eventful history. As a history professor, it was interesting, for sure, but mostly for ‘other’ reasons: it was like a trip to the 19th century when Europeans built such museums, told their history (‘Lithuania used to be much bigger in the 14th century’, the guide often reminded us—imagine a German-speaker saying something like this—which greatly irritated the Germans among the group).

One last word about the table chats: my German interlocutors were all extremely pro-gov’t talking points: Putin is ‘bad’, AfD voters are ‘Nazis’, and the EU the best thing since sliced bread. In these circles, I’m kind of the only one who harbours such heretical thoughts, which I’ll illustrate briefly: as was alleged by my German colleagues, 70% of the electorate (claimed to have voted AfD in suburban-rural East Germany) were ‘Nazis’. When I mentioned that surely not all of these 70% could be (as this claim vastly exceeds the vote Hitler received in the rigged March 1933 election™) and that, perhaps, a few of them have legitimate grievances vs. the gov’t that would otherwise get totally ignored, all I got was something like, ‘well, there may be a point, but they’re still [sic] Nazis’. I suppose that their stance about the Covid Mania is comparable, but our conversation quite never made it there. I also lost interest, and my German colleagues then got into an increasingly absurd, agitated conversation with a Polish scholar—and they found their match: none of them liked Russia (not necessary for any non-Russian), but they were able to up the ante in their Russophobia. It was bizarre.

Herceg Novi, Montenegro (Sat.-Mon.)

Early on Saturday morning, I left the conference before it was over and headed back to the airport. One of ‘my’ Ph.D. candidates—he’s actually a jurist finishing his dissertation in Legal History—had invited me to a conference in his hometown of Herceg Novi, Montenegro (see my postcard weblog for some impressions), hence I flew to Warsaw, Poland first.

Warsaw’s airport was crowded, which serves as an indicator of Poland’s rising economic fortunes. I boarded a direct flight to Dubrovnik, Croatia, where I was picked up by the driver of my hotel.

One of the core features of going to Montenegro from Croatia was—it’s kinda ‘old-school’ experience: the former country is outside the EU/Schengen area (but unilaterally introduced the euro in 2002), hence there were passport controls upon leaving Croatia and when entering Montenegro. Due to the Schengen Agreement, this is totally unknown in the EU/Schengen area, that is, if one excludes the insanity masquerading as public health policy (a.k.a. Covid Passports).

I stayed at a nice Yugoslavia-era hotel, which was modernised—and packed with Western European tourists from all over the Old World. While it’s quite early in the season (hence many seniors were there), you’d also spot several families with small children taking advantage of an off-season and cheaper break.

The Bay of Kotor (Boka kotorska) is a lovely place, it almost looks like Norwegian fjords, and it has the same issues: mass-tourism, incl. cruise ships vomiting out thousands of passengers at-once, there’s a massive hospitality industry with all the accoutrements: huge population swings between summer and winter, almost no employment outside tourism (excl. gas stations and supermarkets), and prices that are but a tad lower than in Western Europe.

In this picture (taken Sunday evening), you can see the beautiful town of Perast—it’s got some 200 residents these days (it had some 9,000 before Modernity), and it’s a ghost town. In summer, it’s AirB&B plus restaurants, there are no more jobs, and even fewer people who live there. This is what the future of many other small places looks like. It’s so sad.

As an aside, my daughter told me that one of her classmates is going to Montenegro for a summer vacation; my take—it’s because Norwegians are struggling to afford the conventional sydenferien (southern holidays) in southern France, Spain, or Italy.

I was told that prices went up quite a bit in Montenegro in the past couple of years (since 2021, oh what a coincidence), yet there remains a share of the population that remains ‘not infiltrated’, as my interlocutor put it.

What is meant is—Western values, habits, and believes are highly corrosive to certain aspects of everyday life, and it’s most obviously visible in the strong social position of Christianity: irrespective of mostly Catholic Lithuania, Poland, and Croatia, or Orthodox Montenegro, the role of Christianity in public life is striking, esp. in comparison to its virtual total-absence in Western Europe.

My take is that secularisation and the ongoing crusade (sic) of the powers-that-be (gov’t, legacy media, experts™) against Christianity in Western Europe will eventually capture Eastern Europe, too. I can easily imagine the result being a very strange Europe: there will be small communities of faith, as Benedict XVI surmised, who will continue to practice Christianity.

What happens to the rest of the people? Well, I suppose that they will indulge for some more time in the most hedonistic-materialism, that is, as long as this is possible. As I was driving home yesterday, I observed the return of both cruise ships to Norway as well as the increasing number of motor homes on the roads. All of these tourists are spending a lot of money on these trips while, a few hundreds of kilometres to the east, Russia and Ukraine are fighting. It’s almost as if those who go on such extravaganzas right now are assuming the good-ol’ ostrich position: the eternal sunshine on the spotless mind. Once the realities of economic depression, blackouts (hi, Spain), and the accompanying features—here’s hoping it won’t be a wider war—kick in, it’ll make for a rather rude awakening.

One last thing I’d like to mention—going elsewhere by plane is becoming more and more of an expensive grift: prices for things big and small were insane—4.90 euros for a cup of coffee at Dubrovnik airport, there’s extra fees here, pay-as-you-go-along there, and, of course, the increasing discrepancy between those (ever fewer) who can afford these trips vs. those who cannot.

As a case in point, I’ll offer you this snapshot from Zagreb airport (my return trip took me from Dubrovnik via Zagreb and Stockholm back to Norway): another cup of espresso for 3.90 euros, but note the ‘Notice’ on the right-hand side:

Plastic cups are charged 0.10 EUR.

Needless to say, it’s the same grift with getting charged for plastic bags in supermarkets to save the climate™ (while every single food item is wrapped in plastic).

So, ‘are you happy with our service’?