Tom Stoppard in the Land of the Last Dictator

Tom Stoppard, author of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and the dude who figured out the Buttle/Tuttle gimmick in Brazil, visits Belarus and writes about theatre in the last totalitarian dictatorship in Europe. That's Belarus.

There is no litter. None. One morning, waiting to be collected, I stood outside my hotel smoking a cigarette and watching the street cleaners with the kind of fascination a tourist would normally bestow on the leaning tower of Pisa. There were four of them within a hundred yards. They wore bright orange overalls. Each had a Cinderella broom and a long-handled dustpan. They patrolled their patch, eagle-eyed for - what? There didn't seem to be a toffee-paper the length and breadth of Independence Prospect. To all intents, they were dusting.