Lithuania

In 2007 we spent our summer holiday in Lithuania.

After one week of beach holiday in Palanga, 25 km north of Klaipeda, we actually planned to travel further to Poland. But one night our car was stolen and disappeared without a trace. It was obviously captured by professionals. We were surprised that our family car, a Volkswagen Passat was so interesting among all those Mercedes & BMWs.

Besides this dark shadow on our holiday which ended immediately, we enjoyed our stay in the new EU country. Palanga is situated at the Baltic Sea and offers wide and sandy beaches. Most visitors are from Lithuania, followed by belorussians and russians. Germans are rare. Most young people up to 25 speak English (more or less), the older generation learned russian at school. The lithuanian together with latvian language is completely different from any of the 3 major family of languages in Europe. These 2 so called baltic languages are even far related to sanskrit, spoken in India! More about this here.

Lithuanian beaches are very clean. If you are hungry just walk a few steps and be served directly at the beach. I don't know this from Germany.

Palanga beach

Palanga is one of a few resorts at the short lithuanian coast. Tourists are mainly young people and wealthy families, displaying their luxury cars. They are usually well dressed, especially women...!

Palanga has a botanic garden with an amber museum which is really worth to visit. You can see many pieces with insects enclosed and finally you proceed to a shop where you can buy nearly everything made from amber - from a simple chain to a sail ship for € 4500.- .

More photos can be found here.