A Lithuanian Sense of Humor

Warning: this is a long, but hopefully fun/funny post, because Lithuania is a WEIRD country with an odd sense of humor.

When your country goes from being one of the most powerful in Europe to one of a handful of minnows on the continent, you have three options: (1) sulk about how good things used to be, see: Portugal; (2) do everything in your power to reclaim the glory days, see: Russia; or (3) laugh about it and keep a healthy sense of perspective. Lithuania has definitely chosen Option 3. Lithuania is proud of things no country ought to be proud of and does some things just because it can. This has led to some really weird results, as my tour around Vilnius--and the Republic of Užupis--today showed me.

The Lithuanian Flag: Yellow for the sun (even though it's
overcast 60% of the year); Green for the forest and nature;
and Red for the blood of soldiers who fought for
independence in 1918 and 1990.

First, some context. Lithuania today has about 2.9 million people, not 3 million, as many Lithuanians try to tell you. The Lithuanian Government puts the official 2015 estimate at 2,895,993. In its glory days--and by glory days, I mean the 14th and 15th centuries when Lithuania ruled over a good chunk of Eastern Europe--the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is estimated to have had 4.2 million people. Granted, the Grand Duchy was 13 times larger than the modern Republic, but such details don't matter to Lithuanians. No, to them, they are a great empire in a small territory with 3 million people, and you can't tell them otherwise. Why does this all matter? Well, even if Lithuania these days is a minnow in the European Union, it has shifted its focus to the Baltic countries and on them, it has a leg up. Lithuania is 200 square miles and 800,000 people larger than Latvia, and 8,000 square miles and 1.5 million people larger than Estonia. So...Lithuania wins. And Lithuania finds itself to be exceptionally unique.

The goddess Medeina riding a bear.

For example. Lithuania is proud that it was the last officially pagan country in Europe. This, of course, attracted a lot of attention from the surrounding Christians who insisted on introducing religion to the people. The first reference to "Lithuania" is actually from a set of monks who in 1009 wrote home complaining about the fact that the pagan Lithuanians had murdered a monk for trying to convert them. Modern-day Lithuania seized on this wonderful reference to its country and people and held a 1,000-year celebration in 2009. And named a street after the slain monk. But mostly, it was a celebration of 1,000 years of the Lithuanian people. In any case, Lithuania eventually did Christianize (officially in 1387), but not to most Christians' liking. Crosses still bear suns and moons, and small monuments to pagan gods still can be found all over the city.

Before I get to the weirdest thing in Vilnius, the Republic of Užupis, here are a few more strange Lithuanian things:

Window cutouts at the University of  Vilnius

The now-jagged road abutting the presidential palace

• On January 1, 2015, Lithuania entered the Eurozone and adopted the euro. To show how sad they were to be leaving the old currency, the litas, behind, Lithuanians began drawing teardrops under the eyes of the figures featured on the litas. As can be expected, the Central Bank was none too pleased, but the people kept doing it anyway, because the litas were crying to be leaving the people's pockets in place of the euro.
• The former mayor of Vilnius, Artūras Zuokas is especially proud of bringing the first IKEA in the Baltics to Vilnius, and is perhaps most famous for driving a tank over a car parked illegally in a bike lane (see video below).
• Lithuanians used to think their language was super unique, until they realized that it's mutually intelligible with Latvian. So they embarked on a big campaign to take out foreign loanwords to make it more different than Latvian.
• During the Soviet era, religion was more or less outlawed. However, Vilnius has hundreds of churches (and before World War II had over 100 synagogues as well). The churches were originally Catholic, turned into Russian Orthodox to appease the Russian Empire, reverted to Catholic in the first independence era (1918-1940), turned into Lutheran churches under the Nazis, and at least one was turned into an atheism museum by the Soviet Union. It is now a Catholic church again.
• In the 1820s, Lithuania wanted to reconstruct what is now the presidential palace, so they hired a Russian architect who had never been to Vilnius and made his design based solely on (inaccurate) city plans provided to him. The result? Not only does this palace have a stick-out-like-a-sore-thumb green roof instead of a red one like everything else in Vilnius (the architect happened to prefer green), but the design was too big. And they only figured that out afterwards, when the palace pushed into the street and up very close to the University of Vilnius building across the street. The Lithuanian solution was to destroy part of the university's building, making a once-straight road temporarily jagged. But even more entertaining, perhaps, is the fact that the now outer wall of the university has window cut outs but no windows, since no one got around to installing them.

Zebricorn

OK, so now on to the best part, Vilnius's really weird sense of humor. There's a district called Užupis that, on April 1, 1997, declared independence. Užupis, which literally means "the other side of the river," is an artists' colony and is everything I imagine an artists' colony to be. They have a statue of the original backpacker--Jesus--and a statue of a zebricorn (a zebra-unicorn hybrid, although he is sadly missing his horn). A visa costs you a smile, and life can be paid in happiness. Užupis is guarded by an angel, but because the statue of the angel took too long to complete, the republic was originally guarded by an egg, from which the angel hatched when the artists finally got done with the angel statue. Užupis has a constitution with some pretty amazing articles, and my favorites are (but I encourage you to read the whole thing here, because it's so weird and so good at the same time):

3. Everyone has the right to die, but this is not an obligation.
10. Everyone has the right to love and take care of the cat.
11. Everyone has the right to look after the dog until one of them dies.
12. A dog has the right to be a dog.
13. A cat is not obliged to love its owner, but must help in time of need.

So that was my day in Vilnius. I spent a good chunk of it laughing at how a people descended from the great Grand Duchy of Lithuania have adapted to being a middling, but proud, member of the European Union. They're not the poorest, but not the richest. Not the saddest, but not the happiest. They keep a healthy positive attitude that was extremely enjoyable to be around! And as promised, here is the former mayor driving a tank over a car.