Global Voices Online

Pestcentric posts a preview of Hungarian politics in 2007.

A new law is likely to wipe out some of Belarus' small businesses, reports TOL's Belarus Blog: “Beginning at January 1st, 2008, individual entrepreneurs will be able to hire only family members and close relatives. It can end up closing half of small businesses in the country.”

Further Ramblings of a N.Irish Magyar spends winter holidays at Lake Balaton: “But, most of all, what I really found attractive was the complete and utter silence round most of the place. No screaming children, no fireworks, no teenies half-cut on their first glass of pezsgo, no brainless TV presenters twittering on in the background, no tuneless mass-renditions of the national anthem at midnight….”

Traveling Life writes about corruption among Polish post-Communists.

The beatroot explains how Polish politics works: “Polish PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski is not a central European version of Margaret Thatcher. If they met he would call her an economic ‘liberalizer’ (a dirty word in Polish government circles) while she would give him a sharp whack over the head with her handbag and accuse him of being a bit of a [whisper it] ‘socialist’.”

Csikszereda Musings posts some hilarious local EU-entry-related pictures.

Csikszereda Musings writes about the two-day New Year's partying ordeal: “Crumbs is this: The next day after a party, in the afternoon, you all go back to the house of the party to have lunch, and basically reminisce about the night before. Lunch, of course, being all the leftovers from the party. That's basically it.”

The Glory of Carniola re-learns to use Roman Candles.

Petro visits Odesa's 7th Kilometer open-air market - and attends a performance of Ukraine's two top Bandurists.