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Why visit Baltics?
New and undiscovered destination,
original and fancy place to go. If you can't find other reasons, go just to
satisfy your curiosity!
Friendly and charming people, speaking many foreign
languages. For the first moment the Baltic people may seem reserved and formal,
but soon you will find them to be very warm and hospitable!
Traditions still alive!
Come to the Baltics during the
Great Midsummer Eve celebration and you will see how the Baltic people
celebrate! Each year the night of June 23 is very special in Baltics, because
the cities empty out, most everyone decorates their cars, bicycles, horses etc.
(even the yellow public busses are decorated) with leaves and flowers and goes
out into the countryside to drink locally brewed beer, eat special Midsummer's
cheese, build campfires, wave wreath of oak leaves and flowers, and sing and
dance until the morning light!
Singing nations! If there are at least 2 of Baltic people
coming together in one place, then it is almost for sure that sooner or later
they will start to sing. The Baltic people have the amazing ability to keep in
memory a huge amount of song texts and almost every second one is singing in a
quire. Talking about quires, have you ever witnessed an entire nation celebrate?
It happens in each of the Baltic countries once every four years, when the great
Song and dance festivals take place. The next festival coming in this year 2003
in Riga, Latvia.
Paradise for nature lovers! Approximately 50% of the
territory of the Baltic States is covered with forests, the population density
is one of the lowest in the world. The Baltic countries are small, but they have
en enormous number of clean and unpolluted lakes and the 1360 km long Baltic Sea
shoreline of white sand is sparsely populated. Many plant and animal species,
such as wolfs, foxes, elks, bears, wild boar and storks which are rare or no
longer found elsewhere in Europe call the Baltics their home. White stork
feeding on live frogs is a rather typical site in rural Baltics, in fact, the
possibility to meet a stork while traveling outside the cities, is coming near
to 100%!
Delicious and healthy food! As all three countries are
situated on the shores of the Baltic see and the territories are reach with
sweet waters, fish is not rare in the menu of Baltic people. What could be
better than fresh smoked fish, bought right from the old fishermans hands in the
small fisherman villages, spreading along the Baltic Sea coast? But do not
worry, there are also other meals served in the Baltics! Almost every one, even
those from the big cities, have their own gardens, where there are vegetables,
fruit and berries grown. The Baltic people have the tradition to make jam, sour
marinated cucumbers and other tasty things for the long winter season by
theirselves. Anyway, the Baltic people love to eat much, but you won't see fat
people in the streets. What's the secret of their diet?
Beer brewed using natural ingredients
and available at a
low price is, perhaps, the secret of the Baltic diet! It is sometimes said that
beer is the way to any of Latvians, Lithuanians or Estonians heart. Come and
find out whether it's true or not. The most popular beer brands: in Estonia -
Saku, in Latvia - Aldaris, Cēsu and Piebalgas, in Lithuania - Kalnapilis, Utenos
and Svyturys.
Trees, trees, trees everywhere you look! Wood has been
the traditional building material for hundreds of years. Also nowadays you can
see lot of traditional wooden houses wit red roofs, some of them are standing
there more than 100 years, others have been newly built in a traditional way.
Approximately 50% of the territory of the Baltic States is covered by forests.
The biologists say that forest is a normal stadium of the Baltic climatic zone.
If the people would stop cutting up trees soon the territory would be a deep
forest. No need to ask which commodity ranks first in exports...
Real snowy Christmas! Winters in the Baltics are
relatively cold. White snow is guaranteed during December, January and February.
Although there are no large mountains in the Baltics, its inhabitants are real
downhill skiing freaks - strange but true!
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