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Today has been my “Sunday”.

Yesterday was quite busy. Tomorrow will be too. Then I go back to work on Saturday. 

I had one of those “Sundays” which can be seen as very lazy, or as time spent usefully re-charging batteries. The weather conspired to push me in that direction. “Horizontal sleet” at lunchtime, I noticed on another local Blipper’s journal. 

For me the end result is hunting around for a Blip at 21:30 with only a glass of wine to help with inspiration. The answer has been staring me in the face for a week. I think Junior must have taken that book out to look at while I was hitting panic buttons in the kitchen last time he was here. 

Palin's travels on the TV series were filmed in 2006-07. I remember thinking it was good. By then I had visited many of those countries for work, and at that time would have been actively working in Slovakia, Latvia and Lithuania. I was spending one week in the month in our office in Vilnius.

I also remembered thinking how little he was able to convey of their individual histories, but it was not intended to be a series to provide that kind of depth. 

I was reminded of one element earlier this week, which was a result of the Soviet Union invading and annexing Lithuania (and Latvia and Estonia) in 1940 after Stalin’s pact with Hitler. Lithuania was then invaded by Nazi Germany in 1941. The Soviet Union resumed its occupation of Lithuania in 1944. 

Fighting age men there were conscripted by whoever was occupying at the time. Some ended up being conscripted by the Soviets and then by the Nazis. Some families has brothers conscripted by and fighting on different sides.        

Junior has been to Lithuania 3 times when he was quite young, but to Latvia and Czechia more recently on ice hockey adventures. Perhaps those trips made him interested in the book.