Lithuania is a European nation that regained its independence in 1991, after more than 50 years of forced annexation to the Soviet Union. Lithuania lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea.

It had been independent from 1918 to 1940, when the Soviet Union occupied it and made it one of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union.
Lithuania owes much to the rich cultural currents of central Europe: it once shared an empire with neighbouring Poland that stretched from the Baltic Sea almost to the Black Sea. Its capital Vilnius boasts a Baroque Old Town that is the largest in Eastern Europe and praised as the ‘New Prague’.

Any country that gives pride of place to a memorial statue of singer Frank Zappa has got to be worth a visit. The Lithuanian people are regarded as much more outgoing and less organised than their Estonian and Latvian counterparts; you’ll make many friends