What would a trip through the Baltics, Poland or Russia be without a myriad of stores selling Amber. Some Amber Facts:

- Amber is a dried and fossilized tree resin that can be millions of years old. The Baltic Amber range extends from Britain, across the North Sea, east to the Baltic Sea, south into Europe and almost all of the known amber deposits in the world are classified as “Baltic Amber.”

- Amber can contain fossilized insects, and a few rare pieces actually have large fossils of lizards, spiders and frogs. Almost impossible to find and if you did, they’d cost a small…or big…fortune.

- Genuine Amber is lighter than gemstones or metal and less dense than saltwater which allows it to float along a seacoast. If you are concerned that the Amber in the store or stall on a street is plastic and just happen to have some salt water with you, drop the amber in to see if it floats! Right…

reproductions of old Amber in the Baltics 

a variety of Amber for sale in a Baltic window
- There are different varieties of Amber. Clear Amber with insects occasionally floating in it along with air bubbles. White Amber, really a yellowish color and opaque. Blue Amber and even Green Amber.

Go in the first or second shop you see, look and buy. I wouldn’t recommend buying off the street unless you are an expert at discerning the real from the fake. Each store has the same varieties, similar prices and it isn’t worth going berserk trying to compare, a total impossibility. We were told that the majority of Baltic Amber now comes from the Kaliningrad shores on the Neringa Spit where it is mined.

More facts and Lithuanian trivia:

- Almost every museum is closed on Monday. A tradition held over from Soviet times.

- Napoleon crossed through Kaunas on his way to Russia and back again in defeat.

-The greatest destruction in Lithuania was caused by the Soviets in 1944 when bombs destroyed 44% of the country.

- St. Christopher is on the Vilnius coat of arms.

- Maxima is the biggest supermarket chain in Lithuania, and every store has a deli section with precooked salads, chicken, sandwiches, and desserts.

- Svyturys (lighthouse), is the most popular local beer. Other brands of beer include Kalnapilis, Tauro, and Utenos.

- Lithuania does not make wine but they do make vodka. The most popular brand is called “Lithuanian Vodka”…that’s easy to remember.

- Crosses were used as guardians in pagan times and to this day, pagan and Catholicism are still combined. For example, a small village will place a cross at the beginning of their village to protect it.

a typical wooden carved cross in Lithuania
- Typical Lithuanian Food consists of: potatoes – plain, mashed, potato pancakes or dumplings filled with vegetables/meat and then fried; Zeppelini (Ceppelini) – huge “zeppelin shaped” dumplings that serve two persons easily. Not fried but filled with minced meat, sour cream or sauce with bacon on top and I was told it had a farina texture; blintzes/blini – Blyne Lai Su Varske in Lithuania is a cheese blintz; Beet soup, very similar to borscht; herring; sausages; and pork, the most popular meat.

Zeppellinis in Lithuania
Lithuanian Explore group stories:

- Several of us were having a conversation about how immigrants to the United States didn’t know birth dates, and their unpronounceable names (to the immigration authorities) were shortened, abbreviated and changed. Patty said when she would ask her mother, a Lithuanian Catholic immigrant, “Ma, when is your birthday?” Her Mother would reply, “When we planted the potatoes.” (Somewhere around the middle of May in Lithuania.)

- Patty went down to the lobby of the Panorama Hotel, Vilnius to ask if she could borrow a spoon from the restaurant to eat yogurt. Would you believe they refused to lend her a spoon? Lithuania is suffering economically and needs tourism badly but, and this is a generalization here, most Lithuanians and others in the Baltics that we had contact with over the age of 40, still subscribe to typical Soviet tourist mentality. No service, no smile and sour faces. After 50 years of oppression, I realistically understand why, but it is off-putting when unhappy people want you to be unhappy.

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