LITHUANIA

Lithuania is the country where we grew up in! It is now the geographical center of Europe and belongs to the Baltic region. While Lithuania is considered to belong to Northern Europe subregion, many citizens still identify it as Eastern European country. According to “World population review” data, in 2019, Lithuania has an estimated population of more than 2.8 million. With the biggest cluster of people located in capital Vilnius. Other major cities are Kaunas & Klaipėda, which actually has the only unfreezing harbor in whole Baltic sea region.

Lithuania has great history, during the 14th century, then so called “Grand Duchy of Lithuania” was the largest country in Europe reaching from Baltic to Black Sea. Most of Lithuanian territory was annexed by Russian Empire on 1772-1795, latter occupied by Germany during WWI. However, from 1918 till 1940 Lithuania had its independence with considerably smaller territory. Unfortunately, during the second world war it was occupied by Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and then again Soviet Union. During all these wars, Lithuania managed to keep its identity. Lithuanian language along with Latvian is one of the only two living languages in the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family, thus, it is being studied by various people across the world.

Now Lithuania is a member and part of European Union, the Council of Europe, eurozone, Schengen Agreement, NATO and OECD. Lithuanian most valuable thing are its people, it is considered as “very high human development” country by the United Nations.

What to expect

From the end of 2015 Lithuania has introduced euro. Even if you do not have euro, it is considerably easy to get it changed from your currency in any bank you visit. However, keep in mind that not all currencies are accepted and check before you go, it might be smarter to get euro before coming here. For example, in Lithuania you will not be able to change Euro to Albanian lek or vice versa.

If you use Revolut, you can withdraw money from any ATM in whole country and up until your plan limit for free.

Lithuania has four season weather. Simply speaking, the climate here is mild and remains pleasant for most of the time, although, snow can appear in April or October. During summer days it can get very hot (up to around 30 degrees) and during winter days very cold (down to around -20 or sometimes even -25 degrees). So, always check what kind of clothing to take with you depending on the weather forecast.

Most of Lithuanian people can speak at least two languages. People from older generation usually speaks both Lithuanian and Russian well as they learned it at school during Soviet occupation. While, younger generation easily speaks both Lithuanian and English. There should be no problem to communicate if you at least one of these languages.

Try your luck during late spring or summer months, when it is already warm, and the temperature rises above 20 degrees. It is most common for Lithuanians to have their summer holidays in July and August.

In 2019 Vilnius was considered the most affordable capital in Europe, thus, considering where are you from spending a weekend here might even save you money!

Hitchhiking through Lithuania was a pleasant experience. We did not even get to start hitchhiking. While we were using last minutes of internet near the road, one guy stopped and asked if we need a ride. After getting to know about our trip, he decided to make a detour to drive us to Lublin, covering almost whole Poland route for us. Amazing!