Lithuania

Well, Belarussians are practically the same as Russians. Very minor differences. Latvians on the other hand speak a language related to Lithuanian and they are mostly protestants. Lithuaniansd are Catholic and historically more influences by Poland...

Okay, that's a lot clearer :-)

Vytenis,

What's the case with this piece of Russia bordering Lithuania? If I'm correct it was part of Germany once?Right?Köningsberg? :-)


http://6mt.com/lithuania.jpg

So there are cultural differences in the Baltic region? Estonia being most "Nordic", Latvia less and Lithuania not very much?

My image of Baltikum:
Three small nations finally without the Russian yoke.
Blondness...blond people....amber on the beaches....yellow grain fields...
A race as friendly and happily round-faced as the Slavs, but without the Slavic aggression, depression and misery.

And people form Netherlands who agressed with germans...

Frederik,

er at De og ikke en troll?

If Lithuania got Kaliningrad and 'lithuanized' it then maybe it can be more western. But from what I've heard the Lithuanians are not trying so hard to remove the Russian influence in their country like the Latvians and Estonians. Russians in those countries have to speak Estonian and Latvian fluently and recoginze the illegal occupation by the Soviet Union in those countries to even by considered citizens.

I didn't write the last message, must be some troll.

I suppose that the reason why Russians in Estonia and Latvia are demanded to pass a language test is that in these countries the number of Russians is definitely higher than in Lithuania. Because Lithuanians make up more than 80% of the total population of their country they could readily admit citizenship to all Russians.
Lithuania is Catholic, and therefore it belongs to west.
Estonia and Latvia have traditionally been most Lutheran, therefore their culture is closer to Scandinavia. Still, Latvia has had a significant Catholic population (in Latgale, SE-Latvia), and thus it is less Scandinavian than Estonia.
Historically, Estonia and Latvia have been close because they were both conquered by Germans in the 13th century, and the German impact has been strong up to the 20th century. There are a lot of Germanisms in both languages (which are not otherwise related, Estonians are linguistic cousins with Finns, Latvians with Lithuanians).

Lithuania * Estonia * Latvia --- the Balkan Sisters! Look up the websites for these three countries...each one has a really lovely looking capital city architecturally....Riga * Vilnius * Tallinn. I think it takes about 3 hours to fly to these cities from the UK. I read that Brits doing stag and hen night weekends are now diverting from Prague to these Balkan cities now because of the very low prices there....especially booze! Poor unsuspecting locals...I'll say three Hail Marys for them......they don't know what lies in store for them with an English invasion but I expect they need the money.

ooops my mate says it takes just 2 hours....not sure.....whatever....

"the Balkan Sisters!" ????? Oh my Gosh....

MY MISTAKE!!!!! wow is my face red! I meant, of course...the BALTIC Sisters! ssssssssooooooorrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyyyy........

Lol... Balkan like Yugoslavia... I'm not sure if I should consider myself "western", but anyway, since the last thing most peruvians heard from Lithuania was in history class with the Perestroika. Yes, we might still consider Lithuania in what we call the "Órbita Socialista", as an independent country of course, NO OFFENSE. Anyway, being closely linked to Russia isn't bad, as a matter of fact, Peru only buys weapons from Russia and Belarus (Bielorrusia), and Russia is "re-developing" at a fast rate nowadays.