Vilnius - The Capital of Lithuania

An early morning start brought us to Vilnius (speak Vilnüs) for our last Free Walking Tour.
Today's guide was called Indrė, which is the short form of water fairies. But she's afraid of water. Indrė taught us that the Lithuanian language is like no other, but closest to Latvian. But they don't really understand each other, only the most northern Lithuanians with very thick dialects can speak to Latvians. Just that they aren't understood in their own country then.
In Lithuanian, you've got female and male endings of a word, -a and -ė (btw is this letter ė only used in Lithuanian) for females, and -as or -s for males. Berlinas and Stockholmas are therefore male cities, but Roma is female (whoever decided that).
The words I've learned today are "Aju" (like sneezing) for "Thank you", "Labas" (speak Labasch") is "Hello", "Iki" means "Bye", and "Taipe" (with a forced smile, so that you don't really hear the -pe) is "Yes".
As you can see are these words rather short, because the Lithuanians are direct and don't like to interact too much with others. They usually don't smile very often, maybe the Resting Bitch Face comes from them.
But they still scored the highest in happiness for people under 30.
Maybe a little history lesson:
Around the 13th century, Lithuania became a kingdom with an actual king, but the Polish and German Christians took over quite soon. They baptised the pagans with blackmailing them basically. Of they wanted to marry the Polish dutchesses, they had to get baptised. And every poor Lithuanian wanted to marry a rich dutchess.
Poland and Lithuania started cooperating and built a Union, creating a huge empire in the 15th century (from old people called the Golden Age). The empire was including todays Belarus and parts of Ukraine down to the Black Sea. Of course, the Russians had to destroy the fun. They took over until end of WWI, after which a short time period of independence existed. Then they came back, then Nazis, then Soviets again, until 1991.
After the communism fell apart, capitalism took over and lots of people lost their jobs. There were only three options for them then: 1. Build a startup - preferably around bananas. 2. Become a thief - preferably of bananas. 3. Leave the country.
700k citizens chose options 3. When the country has only 3 million people, that is a huge portion.
Funnily enough, COVID-19 stopped that outflow of people, and actually brought back lots of Lithuanians. Since 2019, more people have come to Lithuania, than have left. So, at least one good thing came out of that crisis.
About the history of Vilnius itself:
It was found in the 14th century and mentioned first of the Dutch Gediminas. His statue is in front of the cathedral and is quite different to others of people like him. Usually, you'd see a man riding a horse with a sword held ready to fight. But not Gediminas. He's standing next to his horse, his sword in front of his chest, gesturing that he wants to talk, not fight. He was the first diplomat of Lithuania and rather used a pen and tongue, than horses and swords.
Vilnius wasn't always the capital of Lithuania as they once lost the city to Poland. Therefore, a new capital had to be built, and so the small village Kaunas (speak Kauuunas) was growing into the 2nd biggest city of the country. That's why you find more modern architecture in Kaunas and not so much classic or gotic like in Vilnius.
When Vilnius was the capital in the 19-20th century, it was a melting pot of cultures. There were actually only 5% Lithuanians living there. 36% were Jews, and the rest was split between Belarussians, Russians, Polish, Germans, and what not. That led to a language mixed with words from Jiddish, Russian, German, Polish, and even nowadays it's completed by Lithuanian itself and, of course, English. No wonder they are so happy, if nobody understands a word.
But the older generations are still deeply engraved by the Soviet times. They have lots of mistrust regarding the government they've fought for for so long, but also regarding other people. For example, they'd still try to sneak into a queue first, because they wouldn't trust, they'd get their sausages otherwise. Of course, in communist times, if you were too late in the queue, everything was already gone. Understandably, they don't like to share either. So, now you know, why you've got to say "Taipe" with a forced smile - they don't share nor smile very often.
The Lithuanian flag has three colours: Red for the blood they've shed for their country, green for the forests and that should have been it. But the flag creators found it too depressing, so they've added a happy colour: yellow. It's stands for all the yellow things, they've got (and love) here: The sun, potatoes, wheat, beer and blonde hair.
Now some funny stories:
As the Lithuanians were pagans, they still have some traditional festivities they cherish. The biggest is the midsummer. At the 23rd June, all people go into the nature, make a huge bonfire and dance around it. The women however go on a mission: They go to find a blossoming fern. The legend says, that whoever finds a blossoming fern, will get a man and husband. I don't know how many of you are botanists, but ferns never blossom.
One of the pagans goddesses was Medeina, who protects the trees, forests and animals in them. There were two misunderstandings, though: The hunters thought, Medeina was their Goddess and protected them whilst hunting. So, when the hunting community in Vilnius wanted a statue of Medeina, looking like a female bear, the artist understood that they wanted a female on a bear. Now, a naked woman riding a bear sits in front of the hunters community and protects all animals of these hunters. Yeah.
The German Christians tried their best and built around 100 churches for 600k people in Vilnius alone. As nobody goes their for religious reasons, lots of them were repurposed. Most of them were warehouses, but others became restaurants, gyms or... Car services. One church got actually a rebuild to get cars in and out of it. Later, a lift was built into it for the warehouse. Nowadays it's a pancake restaurant, community center and chapel.
The funniest story is the Republic of Uzupis though. Uzupis has been a dorty wreck in the 1990s, the worst place you could be at in Vilnius. There, you couldn't only lose your wallet, but also your fingers at 2am. Obviously, nobody wanted to love there and therefore it was extremely cheap to rent apartments there. And who goes into wrecked districts with cheap renting? Exactly, artists!
They came and claimed the area for themselves, calling out the Uzupis Republic. They even got a president (human) and a vice president (the idea of a cat in general, don't ask). They've got a real constitution and it's really accepted by the capital. They've got rules like always smiling and enjoying the art which is everywhere to be found. And as they've claimed their "independence", they wanted the same for Tibet. So they supported them, so much, that the Dalai Lama himself came several times to Uzupis and visit the Tibetian square there.
Iceland was also supporting Uzupis acceptance (and the Lithuanian in general), so they've got a street named after them, and the Lithuanians still celebrate the independence day of Iceland. Although, I'm not sure, whether this isn't more a win-win on just the Lithuanians side.
And if you were ever wondering: Yes, the singer PINK is quarter Lithuanian, however, she might not know this herself.

After all these informations and walking, we did some hiking on top of the hill behind the cathedral, to overlook the old and new town parts of Vilnius. Then, we bought some Lithuanian donuts, which smelled like German Quarkbällchen but weren't nearly as good as them. Then, we went back to the Republic of Uzupis to buy me some new sandals (which took forever) and some souvenirs.
And then, we could finally drive back home for a quick ice cream break.

Afterwards, we jumped right back into the car and drove to Trakai, 45min from the town, to walk around the castle and manor of Trakai. The lake and sun were beautiful and it was the much needed calm end to a busy day.Okumaya devam et