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| Version 2 | Version 3 |
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| Letter from Lithuania: modern mayhem | Letter from Lithuania: modern mayhem |
| (8 days later) | |
| What was once a fantastic hotchpotch of miscellaneous mischief from cupboards, attics and cellars around Lithuania and beyond is now no more. Some 20-odd years after independence, the grand main post office in the centre of Kaunas has finally come of age. | What was once a fantastic hotchpotch of miscellaneous mischief from cupboards, attics and cellars around Lithuania and beyond is now no more. Some 20-odd years after independence, the grand main post office in the centre of Kaunas has finally come of age. |
| The generic approach to queue management in large public institutions has now become firmly embedded; you tap in on an electronic screen the service you require, it will spurt out a ticket with a counter number, and you sit and wait. Seats have been added to the open space to provide extra value to the new routine. | The generic approach to queue management in large public institutions has now become firmly embedded; you tap in on an electronic screen the service you require, it will spurt out a ticket with a counter number, and you sit and wait. Seats have been added to the open space to provide extra value to the new routine. |
| Previously each window was home to a specific set of services or products, so customers would know which window to go to in order to collect their pensions, to pay one of any number of household utility bills, to cash international money orders, to buy stamps, to pay money for clothes from a mail order catalogue, or to send a letter or letter-sized package, and here they would queue until served. Now, it's a lottery. | Previously each window was home to a specific set of services or products, so customers would know which window to go to in order to collect their pensions, to pay one of any number of household utility bills, to cash international money orders, to buy stamps, to pay money for clothes from a mail order catalogue, or to send a letter or letter-sized package, and here they would queue until served. Now, it's a lottery. |
| At the rear of the main hall, hidden away, there used to be the philatelic counter, complete with its glass-fronted cupboards and flat-top presentation case tables. The glass-top display counters held all stamps going back to the first days of independence, when the new national currency was not yet established. Although collector's items, these stamps were still being sold at face value for use. However, to ask for these old stamps would cause some consternation for the postal assistant as such a request inevitably meant having to open up long since closed albums and in doing so rewrite the weekly accounting stock system. | At the rear of the main hall, hidden away, there used to be the philatelic counter, complete with its glass-fronted cupboards and flat-top presentation case tables. The glass-top display counters held all stamps going back to the first days of independence, when the new national currency was not yet established. Although collector's items, these stamps were still being sold at face value for use. However, to ask for these old stamps would cause some consternation for the postal assistant as such a request inevitably meant having to open up long since closed albums and in doing so rewrite the weekly accounting stock system. |
| This place also held a mass of odd objects on loan from members of the public, who would pay a weekly rental fee for space they used. These items under glass counters included a remarkable array of used international public telephone cards, medals and party badges from the Soviet era, old used communist state postcards (including one of the wreckage of a downed US jet fighter in Vietnam) and Nazi memorabilia including metal shirt and jacket buttons, medals, pin-hole badges, cap badges and tie-clips. | This place also held a mass of odd objects on loan from members of the public, who would pay a weekly rental fee for space they used. These items under glass counters included a remarkable array of used international public telephone cards, medals and party badges from the Soviet era, old used communist state postcards (including one of the wreckage of a downed US jet fighter in Vietnam) and Nazi memorabilia including metal shirt and jacket buttons, medals, pin-hole badges, cap badges and tie-clips. |
| Somehow, though the menacing memorabilia has now long gone, there remains a sense of madness and mayhem in the mix of goods on sale behind these compartmentalised serving staff. | Somehow, though the menacing memorabilia has now long gone, there remains a sense of madness and mayhem in the mix of goods on sale behind these compartmentalised serving staff. |
| • Every week Guardian Weekly publishes a letter from one of its readers from around the world. We welcome submissions, which should focus on giving our readers a clear sense of a place and its people. Pease send them to weekly.letter.from@guardian.co.uk | • Every week Guardian Weekly publishes a letter from one of its readers from around the world. We welcome submissions, which should focus on giving our readers a clear sense of a place and its people. Pease send them to weekly.letter.from@guardian.co.uk |
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