🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹 Do you know Lithuania?

So as you know, my dear Steemit friends, I am Lithuanian. Do you know a lot about this small country?
So I want to share some information about it :)
Lithuania is a beautiful country. If you are interested in traveling you might be surprised how many nice things we have in Lithuania.

To begin with Lithuania is a basketball country so you better know at least Arvydas Sabonis or Jonas Valančiūnas before coming – if you say these names to Lithuanian – you just found a new friend.
Talking about history I can tell you a really breath one, ok?
Lithuania – big empire with great Dukes, in XIV century it was as big as from Baltic to Black sea! Bum.
We are great and cool until XVI century when we get together with Poland until XVIII century when what we have Lithuania becomes part of Russian empire. XIX century – we are together with Russians, Lithuanian language is forbidden and so on, but also during that time our country is created as we have now – political parties are trying to get independence. 1918 we get it but we lose Vilnius to Poland. Our capital is Kaunas. And then – second world war – Soviets – Nazi – Soviets until 1990 when we get our independence and here we are now. I think this is like the shortest Lithuanian history you can read but for now its enough :)

Another important thing - Language!
Probably most of you are thinking we speak Russian or they just do not think what is the language. So we speak Lithuanian. And it has nothing to do with Russian or any other neighbors except Latvians. We call them our brothers because of similar language and culture.
The language family that most European languages belong to is Indo-European, but they started splitting apart from each other probably around 3500 BCE. They developed into dozens of other languages like German, Italian, and English, gradually losing the features that they had all shared. Lithuanian, however, up in the Baltic language branch of the Indo-European family, retained more of the feature of what linguists call Proto-Indo-European (PIE), which is the language that they postulate was spoken around 3500 BCE. For whatever reason, Lithuanian has kept more of the sounds and grammar rules from PIE than any of its linguistic cousins, and can therefore be called one of the oldest languages in the world. This it why we are so proud about it. Only about 4 million people can still speak it.
Words you might need or just fun to know:
Hello – Labas;
Bye – Viso gero;
Thank You – Ačiū ( Almost like sneezing achoo)
Excuse me – atsiprašau
Cheers – Į sveikatą
Do not worry, it is not only one of the oldest languages but also one of the most difficult one. Good news are that most of the people speak English so you will not have problems while visiting.

I will post more facts later! Hope you enjoyed it!
Stay tuned :) cheers!