Trouble on the edge of paradise

I’ve been visiting the Lithuanian coast for a number of years. It’s much shorter than Poland’s (100 km compared to 500 km), but for some inexplicable reason it is far less crowded. Lithuania does have three or four resorts where noisy holidaymakers take up every inch of the relatively limited space available (such as the pier in Palanga and the promenade in Šventoji), but away from those overrun tourist traps it’s all peace and serenity. You only need to go a couple of hundred yards from those swimming areas with all the lifeguards and gaudy windbreakers to find miles of empty beaches. But even this paradise hasn’t been left entirely untouched by the times we live in. You might only rarely hear Russian spoken on Lithuania’s streets these days, even though they previously accounted for two-thirds of the visitors from abroad, as they are no longer welcome in the country. However, if you do hear the cadences of eastern Slavic, without doubt you w