'Grexit' - Germany Open to Possible Greek Euro Zone Exit.

'Grexit' - Germany Open to Possible Greek Euro Zone Exit. (Spiegel).

There was a time when Germany feared the consequences were Greece to leave the euro zone. Now, though, with Greek elections approaching, Chancellor Angela Merkel is willing to accept a "Grexit" should a new leftist government in Athens demand concessions.

At midnight, Lithuania's days without the euro came to an end. As the calendar flipped to 2015, the countdown clock hanging over the entrance to the country's central bank hit zero and fireworks shot into the air above the city palace in Vilnius. People celebrated in the streets and in the bars of the Lithuanian capital as a euro symbol was projected onto the facade of the city's neoclassical cathedral. Not long later, Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius withdrew a 10-euro note from a cash machine decorated especially for the occasion.

Lithuania is now the 19th member of the euro zone. The country's currency, the litas, is history, making way for the "euras," as the European common currency is known in the country. 

In Greece, meanwhile, 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) to the south, a different kind of countdown is proceeding apace. In contrast to Lithuania, however, the days being counted could be the final ones in the country's participation in the euro zone. On Jan. 25, Greek voters will be heading to the polls for parliamentary elections. Should the leftist alliance Syriza win, as polls show it might, the euro could soon be history in the country. Read the full story here.