Soviet nostalgia
Since the national airline went bust just after Christmas last year, air travel in and out of Vilnius has been quite difficult.A travel agent in Vilnius has offered me a flight  by Eurolines  (I thought they only did buses), maybe operating (or maybe not) from December 11.  The only direct flight from Vilnius to Tbilisi.The good news is that it's only 351 Euros.  The same flight on Air Baltic costs over 400 Euros and sometimes over 500 Euros.But the bad news is ........ it's on a YAK-40.  My office manager (he's young) assumed I didn't know what that was, and warned me it was the most dangerous plane of Soviet times, propellor, noisy, bad pressurisation,

More reasons not to use Air Baltic
Yesterday I received an email to propose that I  check in online.   How nice to get a reminder in time to do it, I thought.However, in the list of advantages for check in online was the following:    It's free of charge. Airport check-in fee is EUR 5.WTF!  Where did that come from?  Nowhere mentioned on the website.  Imagine you turn up at the check in desk and are asked for 5 Euros to check in, with no warning.  Absolute uproar, the best way to alienate customers.  Check in assistants collecting money with no receipts and no change!  At least agent 968 was

Is election fever worse than swine flu?
It seems the politicians in Ukraine are using swine flu as just another issue for electioneering.  Yushchenko seems to have caught it particularly badly see here and here and here he is even suggesting Ukraine has its own hybrid version of swine flu.  Levko is pointing out that the Brits seem to have about the right level of calmness about the fact that most cases are occuring in Britain, but those who are dying are vu

Is it raining everywhere?
My week in Cyprus has been spoilt by the lousy weather: deluges every lunchtime, and grey skies most of the rest. The hail stones like tennis balls missed Nicosia.   It seems the weather forecast is not much different in Tbilisi. Turkish Cypriots are getting qualified to join the EU.  They are already skeptical and able to point out the inconsistencies and stupidities of some of the legislation.  On the other hand they are not able to recognise the difference this makes.  Some of them seem to prefer poverty and isolation "in" Turkey (and no changes) to economic development and a higher standard of living with the EU.  Changes are difficult.  The public sector earns mo

AirBaltic pays more attention to Georgia by learning from Aeroflot and Ryanair
It seems AirBaltic is now been made Airline of the Year by the European Regions Airline Association, and is inviting us to celebrate this by booking cheap flights. Eventually it becomes clear that this only applies to flights starting in the Baltic States, which is not much help if you start in Tbilisi. It’s not clear what the criteria were for this prize but to me it seems their service is deteriorating rapidly. Because the Lithuanian national airline flyLAL went bankrupt at the beginning of the year, AirBaltic is now the only affordable and sensible route between my work in Tbilisi and my home in Vilnius. So I have been travelling