THE VOICE OF INTERNATIONAL LITHUANIA
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I have a T-shirt bought in Vilnius University with "I love Lithuania, hmmm ... but where is it?" on the front. Obviously that ignorance doesn't apply just to Brits and Americans. LIETUVA IS NOT IN EASTERN EUROPE. Countries east of Polska are in Eastern Europe. Lietuva is in Northern Europe. In fact, as you know, the French claim that the centre of Europe is in Lietuva; though I'm sure that even the French would not claim that Lietuva is in Central Europe. It's an important distinction, and I believe it is vital to the tourism success of the Baltic States, that they disassociate themselves from the notion they are in Eastern Europe. To people in the West, Eastern Europe is the Balkans, the former Yugoslavia, an area of ethnic hatred and wars, some of which NATO became involved in to stop genocide. That’s not an image Lietuva needs in order to bring in tourists to its lovely country.
Tony Olsson
North Devon, UK
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Nice one Tony! I have been having the same debate for ages. However, when that debate involved a person from Finland, which is more east from Western Europe than Lithuania, they were not keen at all to accept Lithuania as being Northern Europe. Apparently, it is more of a cultural divide, rather than a geographic location, which sets the Northern Europeans apart from the Baltic Eastern Europeans.
So much for the One Europe in the form of the EU. But even that concept is hard to swallow, since Turkey, will very likely become a part of the EU. Since Cyprus is part of the EU, then Lebanon, Jordan and Israel will follow suit soon!
At the end of the day…on a more serious note…we should not concern ourselves with labels…what is enough, is that we respect the next man as much as we would him to respect us!