Prepare Yourself! 5 Shocks of Lithuania

Today, I thought I would make a travel-guide-style video for people new to Lithuania. More specifically, I wanted to go over some things that might be shockingly different for some people.
Join this channel as a Patreon patron to get access to perks:
www.patreon.com/user?u=84794387
Find us on our website: www.lithuaniaexplained.com/
Instagram: / lithuaniaexplained
Facebook: profile.php?...

[@Armadeus]

i'm from hong kong (where no joke we just hit 26c TODAY) and i'll be studying in vilnius for six months. definitely a good list of items to keep in mind!

[@Burke1O1]

if you need any advice or answers let me know :)

[@slugma1054]

If you need any kind of help, i'm always open to help out.

[@meganrodrigues1098]

Me too! I'm from Brazil! Can we exchange contacts?

[@mattsliafertas]

@@meganrodrigues1098 @burke101 wow, sorry to ask, but what are you studying there? I always want to live there for a season.

[@ppovizz]

as Lithuanian I really hate the ''dark season''.

[@prajaktabachal4071]

Thanks for making these videos. I've recently migrated to Vilnius and your KZbin videos have helped me alot. Am sure you may get complements from your subscribers, just wanted to say thanks from my side as your videos really helped me!

[@UtamagUta]

The most rage inducing "translation" of a website I encountered was the Užupis tourist information website. You see I saw a post on reddit how Egyptians or whatever, saw on tik tok where their influencer advertised Lithuania as a gateway to Europe because Užupis gives out visas very easily. I was like wtf? Those people are dumb! But sure enough - their website had an ambiguous "we welcome all people from around the world" line and very pushing the PR compaign of being independent from Lithuania. No wonder very few of 'guide' videos mention that that district is but a joke of local artists and not an actual state. To give benefit of a doubt, maybe they had a disclaimer somewhere on their website, but definitely not a homepage.

[@UtamagUta]

Also not having Lithuanian language lessons online is downright embarrassing as the digital age

[@MugSack]

Did you know Užupis celebrate their creation on April fool's day

[@UtamagUta]

@@MugSack Apparently those who believed said influencer and flooded URM with enquires did not read about the history. Point is the key information must be presented in first few sentences of a paragraph, not burried somewhere in FAQ section Also, it is very ignorant of you to think that everyone have similar April 1st traditions. it's giving "Why don't you celebrate July 4th in Europe?" vibes.

[@MugSack]

@@UtamagUta I don't think you understand what I mean, April fool's day for us is like for everyone else, so that's why Užupis celebrates on April fool's day cuz it's a JOKE, I think you're ignorant here

[@UtamagUta]

@@MugSack kas tas "mes"?? Instructions in ENGLISH is clearly not for locals. I myself can perfectly read in Lithuanian or in fact do not even need to as I was there when it was established.

[@Burke1O1]

1:18 Shock 1 2:01 Shock 2 2:55 Shock 3 4:55 Shock 4 6:09 Shock 5

[@manometras]

Or pasiruošimas (preparation of yourself). Nice video. It will help a bit with the pasiruošimas.

[@seanshepard2000]

agree on 2 points, agree to disagree on another: as an American from Virginia, we are used to SUPER humid, hot summers ... but the thing is, we have air conditioning EVERYWHERE - as a matter of fact, it's the one point of contention with myself and my (Lithuanian) wife - she HATES the cold air, even when it's 99F outside, but when it's hot and humid outside, you can escape to an indoor setting and are guarenteed air conditioning - my experience in Lithuania is, well, that even when it's 16C outside, for me, that's still warm ... so, I miss the airco and try to plan my trips outside of the hotter times of the year. Now, when we were there for Christmas 2021, the outdoor temp on our car thermometer measured, at one point, -26C ... OUCH! that is SOOOO cold, lol. I love the cold, but this was the kind of cold that takes your breath away. I still prefer it to the summer, but one definately needs the right shoes, a heavy coat, a scarf and a good winter cap is a MUST! (I have a few reallt warm ones form Audimas!). Those 2 things are a shock to me. The 1 thing I tend to somewhat disagree with is the making friends thing. Now, maybe it's just because I'm an uber-friendly guy who happens to speak relatively good Lithuanian, or maybe I just was at the right place at the right time, but I have found making friends easy. I can safely say I have more Lithuanian friends (or friends in Lithuania) than I do friends here in the States. Maybe it's due to similar interests (I made a really good friend years ago who did youtube videos for Baltic Aviation Academy, and I met up with him at the airport in Aleksotas, we;ve been friends since - he's visited us twice in the USA and was our first guest in our new house when we bought it back in 2017). Or maybe it's just because I'm an oddity - an American who wants to move direction LT (which seems more rare than bnot for many Lithuanians), but I find the people I"ve interacted with very friendly and we tend to stay in touch. Good call, btw, on the LT Pastas website (english side) - it's pretty bad, lol.

[@Laurynas_LTU]

At least most food items in our shops and websites have translations in other languages, mostly in LV, EE and EN. In DE (Germany), for example, everything's in German, nothing's translated. Try and find your way around that ha ha! Another point regarding the language is that Lithuanians will switch to your mother tongue even before you askd them to. And not just to English, but to russian or Polish, or any other European language. So, as with the daylight hours and the weather, you need to compare LT to other countries to have a better picture of the country.

[@filmvideocreations4516]

Yup, In Germany you have 2 options: Google translate or learn the language.

[@penna_pasta5]

I just want to thank you for all of your videos I'm a gonna be student in Vilnius university. And yk what your videos I found out of nowhere and it helped me a lot. Thank you ❤❤

[@RichieLarpa]

I will add my own shock, coming from a person living in Czech Republic: I was not ready for a fact that Lithuania is on a different time zone, hence I was robbed and lost one hour! But luckily and logically, they gave me back my precious hour at the state border. Lietuviai, aš esu be žodžių... 😁

[@Zoli049]

I came here from Hungary to work in February. Nothing shocks me, I like living here. I talk to many old people in Russian. I know it's not a popular language today.

[@SpardauDebesi]

It's not the language it's the people...

[@markplenty2631]

I always fly into Kaunas, it's a nice airport and know my way around.. I had no problem approaching people and talking in Lithuanian to begin with and most people wanted a chat with me to find out more.

[@eglunasklimavicius9771]

Regarding English version you totally right!!! ❤Aciu uz video.

[@ZhylvisLT]

I would say the 1st one is overrated. If you came from London, Dublin, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Berlin there is absolutely no shock because this is being experienced everywhere in this latitude and above it. I would give you some examples for reference, I do not touch Norway, Sweden and Finland though. Sunset and daylength TODAY (2023-11-27): Copenhagen 15:46 and 7h39min; Edinburgh 15:48 and 7h36min; London 15:58 and 8h20min; Berlin 15:59 and 8h11min; Vilnius 16:01 and 7h50min; Dublin 16:14 and 8h03min; Amsterdam 16:34 and 8h12min.

[@Xicor111]

Very cold winters and very hot summers were always in LT. Its just they change by the decades, some years colder, some hotter.

[@maleficent08]

Asian 🙋‍♀️watching all your videos because I'm considering a man courting me from there 🤭 Thanks for sharing.

[@burakhustle4713]

Hey!Can you make a video about buying a car in Lithuania?

[@LithuaniaExplained]

There’s already a video on this topic- and an article on the website (LithuaniaExplained.com)

[@seanshepard2000]

there's a really good article on his webiste about this topic. I think it's written by a German guy(?) who lives in Lithuania

[@travelvideos]

#1: One can organize work around daylight: work in the morning and take the afternoon off to enjoy a few hours of sunlight, then work again in the evening when it is dark. Something like siesta, but make it longer.

[@Ah0jtadyHanka]

"Lithuania is not that well connected to the rest of europe by plane" Meanwhile me doing research on lithuania bcs i found super cheap returning tickets from Bratislava to Kaunas, all just for 30 Euros. :D

[@bhuvanesh1]

You should actually make more language videos to learn lithuanian

[@jurgasbielinis2130]

2:55 - exactly, hard to make friends as a foreigner is not unique to Vilnius. It’s pretty much the same in every big city in every country. Ask yourself - how many foreigners were/are you friends with in your own country? The good chances are: NONE. Ask yourself why?

[@ranaharoon07]

Any work permit in Lithuania?

[@aSnailCyclopsNamedSteve]

You have not been here long enough. 1. This is a small country, but it still has quite a variety of weather. We have a snowbelt with considerably more snow, a humid area (coastal), and a dry area (furthest inland). Where you live will determine how you experience both hot and cold. I work from home, so the amount of daylight does not affect me. Being self- employed also affects how I see daylight. For people who are sunlight sensitive, there are special lightbulbs. I am not and so it is easy enough for my sleep routine to migrate through the day and night, esp. if I have to work through the night. 2. Temperature is mostly a matter of how you dress and humidity, not the actual temperature. The Nordic countries are great advocates of this. If you are cold, it means that you are not protecting your chest enough. Either wind is getting under your clothing or you are dressed too lightly and the heat is radiating out. Vilnius is generally dry and so the cold is easy to take here. The trick is wearing multiple layers of tight fitting, natural fibre undershirts. And second hand is no longer the cheapest way to shop. Lithuania has shipping arrangements with many EU countries where you can buy online there, ship to a warehouse in that country, and they will move the shipments en masse by truck to Lithuania once or twice a week for a reasonable fee and deliver using DPD. My wife handles that side so I do not have the addresses myself, but it is far cheaper with better quality. Small towns in Lithuania have a better local second-hand selection, but Vilnius gets scoured pretty fast and pretty thoroughly. If you are buying second hand inside Lithuania, then there is a Kaunas woman who sells housewares cheaply online and then, of course, there is Vinted, which is also connected to Vinted in Poland and soon Finland. The rest of the network is not connected to Lithuania and so it might be expensive in France, but not here. Unsold second-hand items are more likely going to a country further down the economic ladder than we are. That used to be Russia and Belarus, but they want to buy Chinese now. Minimum wage in the farthest West is about 15 euros an hour, here is the medium range with 5, and much of the poorer countries have minimum wages of a dollar or less. 3. Knowing the local language will open many, many doors and Lithuanian is one of the easiest languages to learn, although not with current instruction books. (It took me 10 months to reach fluency.) But with VMI (State Tax Inspectorate) and other sites, you have to use the Lithuanian version and have Chrome autotranslate it for you rather than the published English version because the links often do not work or exist on the latter. When it gets fun is when the instructions for navigating a site are given in English by my client (using autotranslate) but I have to navigate in Lithuanian while trying to back-translate to find the button to click on. 5. Hey. we are in the centre of Europe, literally. But the east is mostly Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. So the places most people are wanting to visit are on the other side of Poland, which is still a big country, unlike Lithuania, which was broken up under occupation.

[@aistisnavickas1937]

Yea, but the fifth is because we like to travel. It's just plain boring to hop into an airplane and get to somewhere like Warsaw. Why wouldn't you go by train or bus?