- I've been traveling the world for the past 10 years.
And very often I get asked the same question.
What's your favorite country?
And I always say Lithuania is one of my favorite countries.
And people are like, "Uh, uh, uh, where's that?"
And I need to start from the beginning.
(relaxing music)
(calm piano music)
I just came back from this long trip in Northern Europe,
and there's one thing I still can't understand,
why Lithuania has remained
such an understated country for so long.
So in this video, I'm gonna share you with you three parts
so you understand how exciting this country is.
And hopefully by the end of the video,
this will be on your to-do list.
Let's get down to the most important fact about Lithuania.
Yes, fast forward to the beginning of the 15th century.
And you'll see that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
was indeed the largest kingdom in Europe,
which was led by Vytautas the Great,
to the country's peak.
In fact, it included parts of today's Russia,
Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine.
This once expansive empire slowly shrunk,
after forming ties with neighboring rivals Poland
to form the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569.
And finally being overtaken by the Russian empire
from 1812 onwards,
Lithuania became part of the Russian empire.
Their language was banned.
One of the oldest languages in the world, banned.
Then the Germans occupied Lithuania in 1915
and offered Lithuanians the choice
of being with them or Russia.
Lithuania said no to both options.
And they signed the Act of Independence
in February 16th, 1918,
but then the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania again,
triggering the genocide.
Then the Nazi German occupied it with their own genocide.
And three years later,
the Soviets occupied Lithuania one more time,
sentencing Lithuania to 46 more years of occupation,
but something magical was about to happen.
The Baltic states of Lithuania,
Estonia and Latvia formed a peaceful protest
against the Soviet Union.
Roughly 2 million people formed
a 600 kilometers human chain across the three countries.
This led to Lithuania's independence on March 11th, 1990,
the first of the Soviet Republics to do so.
(upbeat music)
So, we have a local person today with us.
You probably know her already,
but if not lets reintroduce her.
(speaking Lithuanian)
The first topic obviously is going to be basketball.
When we think about basketball,
what we really think is about legends
like NBA people like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson,
LeBron James, Kobe Bryant.
And we don't really think about Lithuanian basketball,
but these guys actually have a very strong team.
So what I read is that Lithuania in the 1930s
won two EuroBasket tournaments.
Can you say that basketball appetite
started from that point in time in Lithuania?
- Yeah, actually, I think that was the time
when Lithuania started winning, became very strong.
And the only problem that we had it was,
we were always occupied by one country or another.
So I think it was kind of a mental escape.
- Actually a fair point,
because I remember watching with you.
- Don't bring me back to that movie. (laughs)
- It's actually a very inspirational story
about the 1992 Lithuanian basketball team.
As you know, in 1988,
Lithuania won the Olympics in basketball.
It was not Lithuania, it was the Soviet Union,
probably 80% of the team were Lithuanians.
So in 1992 as an independent country,
they played in this basketball competition in Barcelona,
in the Olympics, they won the bronze,
the dream team was the US because it was the first time
that they've played with active NBA players.
The other dream team is Lithuania in this case.
And you won the bronze.
- When I talk about it, I become very emotional,
but maybe it's just me.
When I watched that movie, I literally cried like a baby.
And still, I'm getting emotional as well now.
What lesson you can take is that,
don't take things from granted
because people were fighting so much
to show that we can and we are able
and show the world that we have something,
even though we are small and we want to be listened.
- Absolutely right.
Because as an independent country, such a small country,
like 2.7, 2.8 millions, you are able to compete
at that high level with the US and teams like that
it's just impressive.
Sabonis is like Michael Jordan in Lithuania.
Like historically, everyone loves Sabonis.
- If you don't know Sabonis,
like in what village have you lived all your life,
it's impossible not to know him.
- Yeah. I think even when we went to Lithuania,
a couple of years ago, we watched Zalgiris,
(audience cheering)
and the coach back in the days was Šarūnas.
And he's also a legend, Sabonis was more for
let's say people in the 80s or 90s
and Šarūnas I think more for the younger generation.
- I grew up with Šarūnas, Macijauskas, Javtokas
- I think with Kristina,
we can relate a lot in basketball
because I'm Argentinian, and if you think about this,
the US won every single gold medal
except for 2004 in Athens,
in those Olympics, Argentina won the gold medal.
Every time I whistle, like (whistles),
Kristina is like,
can you explain me, what's so wrong when I whistle?
- It's kind of, calling little devils in this sense.
So I don't think about it. I just don't like it too much.
- You know, when we got married in Argentina,
I remember your family, they came with black bread and salt.
And what was that about it?
- Rye bread represents the fact that
they wish you to have always food on the table and salt.
It's a spice. So your life should be spicy.
And remember that it's not always only good things.
It's sometimes you need to swallow things as well.
- Black bread combined with salt
brings good luck and health and positive vibes, right.
- Good in life, basically.
- I guess you never sat down in the corner of a table.
- Oh no. No.
You will be unmarried for seven years if I'm correct.
- Yeah. And I always find that fascinating
because you're a Christian country,
obviously the last country in Europe
to be converted to Christianity,
but you have a very long history of being a pagan country.
And I think most of these superstition things
come from being pagan for so long, right?
- Yeah. They were fighting against Christianity.
They were fighting against new rules to become a kingdom
back in 13th century.
It was like a very, very big, win in Lithuanian history.
But it happened just once.
We had King Mindaugas only once in our history.
- All right. So let's talk about a different topic.
Storks.
Every time I go to Lithuania, I pay attention to the houses.
What's going on with storks in Lithuania?
- I think that house is blessed
because the stork chooses to come to your place
and it gives protection.
We have always had storks
and we were kind of waiting for, oh the storks are coming.
- Okay. So probably the last topic, Lithuanians in general,
when you see them for the first time,
they don't smile, they don't laugh.
Like they're very serious people.
They have a good sense of humor.
And in 2018, I think it was Vilnius.
They put an ad on TV,
like the G-spot of Europe to promote tourism.
What was that?
- I think it was to say that, yeah, look,
we are in the middle of Europe and no one knows about us.
It's kind of the best happens there, in that sense.
There's so much stuff going on in Lithuania,
why don't you come and enjoy it?
Obviously it attracted some attention.
But if the attention was positive or ironic.
I am not too sure.
- All right. That's all guys.
And thanks so much, Kristina as always for your time.
- My pleasure.
- You guys if you stayed this long, if you survived
this long and you generally enjoyed the video,
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- To subscribe, right? (laughs)
Yeah. Thanks so much for watching and.
- See you next week.
♪ What Do I believe ♪
♪ What makes me feel it to write you this song ♪