It was the late, great Frank Zappa who said you’re not a real country unless you have a beer and an airline.
Well, Lithuania certainly has the first – a rich, golden brew known as Svyturys. But since January 23, when the main national carrier, flyLAL, declared bankruptcy, it hasn’t had the second. The result, as I discovered last week, is that it is harder to travel to Lithuania than any of the European Union’s other 26 member-states. Read more





Gideon Rachman and his FT colleagues debate international affairs on