A Few Impressions of Our Trip in Lithuania

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Woodcut60

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Stockholm, Sweden
[SIZE=10.5pt]My wife and I have been on a beautiful train journey in Lithuania. We flew to Vilnius, the capital, and there we boarded a train to the Medieval town of Kaunas. It is a short trip, only 1 hour and 40 minutes, and we bought First Class tickets.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]Here are a few impressions of our trip.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]This is the train station in Vilnius:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]AU211.jpg[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]AU245.jpg[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]Second Class:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]AU229Second.jpg[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]Second Class:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]AU227Second.jpg[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]First Class:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]AU231First.jpg[/SIZE]

Town Hall in Kaunas:

[SIZE=10.5pt]AU242.jpg[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]Our train back to Vilnius:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]AU250.jpg[/SIZE]
 
Everywhere looks clean and tidy, with little population... Are the pictures from a Sunday morning at 6am?
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Nice modern trains too!

Ed,
 
Yes, jis is right. The three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) are gorgeous tourist destinations, with good hotels and restaurants, and friendly people.

@Ed: Haha, no, not a Sunday morning, but an average Wednesday. Yes, the trains are very modern and clean. On the other hand, we had two female conductors and they spoke not a word English. A little bit frustrating. English is not widely spoken in Lithuania. With older people I tried with German, and sometimes that went well.
 
@v v: Lithuanian is the first (native) language which is totally incomprehensible, even if you know English and German. The languages are not related.
 
@v v: Lithuanian is the first (native) language which is totally incomprehensible, even if you know English and German. The languages are not related.
That is because Lithuanian is not a Germanic language. It is a really odd language in that it preserves a lot of structures and words from old languages like early Latin and Vedic Sanskrit. It is said that someone conversant in Vedic Sanskrit stands a better chance of quickly picking up Lithuanian than almost any modern language speaker. In terms of classification it is a member of the Baltic branch of the Balto-Slavic group which is part of the Eastern branch of the Indo-European family, so called the 'Satem' branch identified using the cognate used for the concept of "hundred". The western branch uses 'centum'.

Actually the Baltic languages are all interesting in that way. Lithuanian is like a language museum for those that study proto Indo-European languages. Estonain is a Finno-Ugric language like Finnish and Hungarian, which is very different from Germanic or Romance or Slavic languages, in that it is not even in the Indo-European family. And Latvian or Lettish is closely related to Lithuanian.
 
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