I was looking out for things turning Baltic in Copenhagen airport. Moving down, after waiting for 4 hours, into the slender waiting area for our tiny and dirty plane I heard new languages and looked into the faces of the men and the dress style of the women, looking for s0mething posst-communist – or something discernably different from Danish or English. After flying for an hour I opened my eyes to find ourselves just a few feet above the runway with slushy discoloured snow piled up and mist in the air. My map of the airport downloaded from some tourist site had made the place look huge. In fact the carousel carrying in our bags just ran for a minute, then stopped; all the bags had been off loaded. Outside I sensed something ex military in the air, in the barack looking buildings in the snow under the pine trees opposite. Its chilly but not cold. We stand around a bus stop from which my guide book assures us buses leave every 20 minutes for Klaipeda. Eventually taxi drivers tell us there are no buses. Whether this is a ruse or not to get our fares, none of us hesitate to load our bags and climb in. Sitting in tthe front in silence with the driver with his leather cap on, with the others talking in the back, i am glad for the opportunity to examine the roads, how people drive, what the cars are like, what the roadside building is like. Half built, sometimes roughly built with unfinished breeze block. Its raining and dull.

Klaipeda is the same, half built, gritty as the guide book says, huge puddles in the roads, but with distinct pockets of something new; bijou hotels like this (with its free wifi) and on the short walk I take in the darkening evening, galerijas where only women seem to be inside, hairdressers and boutiques. It reminds be for a moment of Croatia, where there is a real concern with style and it is done very nicely even though Paris is hundreds of miles away.