Get out the popcorn. It's November.

Youtube is not only good for watching old movies and clever kitty videos. You can travel through time with it, if you hunt around a bit. Kind souls have posted video clips showing places that have drastically changed over time, or even disappeared completely. The visuals are interesting, even if you don't speak the languages involved.

Today's Short Subject: To get you into the mood, listen to this Yiddish lullaby called Shlof, Mayn Kind. The text is by Sholem Aleichem, and the song reminds us of just how many Europeans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were leaving their homes and journeying into unknown futures in the west.

Today's Features: Today, we'll take a look at some of the cities the emigrants left. All of them were centres of Jewish life before the war, all have been drastically changed by the events of 1939-45. Only one of these films has English in, sorry. But the images give us a glimpse into a world that we never had a chance to know.

Cernauti (Czernovitz) in 1939-1940 was a multicultural Bukovina university city before the Soviets forcibly annexed it and started ethnic cleansing. This Romanian-language film gives you a quick look into the bustling city. They're proud of those modern trolley buses.

Lvov (Lwow, Lemberg) was another thriving city. This one's in Poland, and the singing's in Polish. Give them a break: everybody's hit music was kind of lame back then. But don't those streets and all those people make you wish you could take a stroll and eavesdrop on them? (With a Polish phrasebook in hand.)

This little documentary on Vilnius (Vilna) is in two parts: Part I and Part II. An impressive Lithuanian city, diverse and colourful. The narration's in German, so we've got a fighting chance. The subtitles are in Lithuanian. (Me to Elektra: 'See? If your grandparents hadn't got on that boat, you'd have to learn to spell that.' Elektra: 'Ugh.')

Song of Radauti. Again, apologies for no diacriticals. But finally, something in English. Laurence Salzmann, a Fulbright scholar, stumbled across this Romanian town, which once had a large Jewish population. He came into town for the market, but had got the wrong day. There were nine men in the synagogue, so Mr Salzmann was very welcome (you need 10 for a minyan to start the prayers). Let him tell you his story, and the story of Radauti. I think you'll be intrigued. The music is more to my taste, but I'm prejudiced in favour of Romanian music.

So there you have it: the lost cities of Eastern Europe. A past wiped out by world war. But aren't those places fascinating? Don't you long to go there? If you find any on your own, share them with us. They don't have to be in Europe. Take us somewhere in your time machine.