– Hey Agnė, did you have fun last night with your friend Aistė, she is really crazy, I like her.
– Jo Jo !! She is fun, but she is not my friend, we are classmates.
– Really, how long do you know each other ?
– Three years.
– Say what ? :O
This is a very common scenario. If you ask a Lithuanian how many friends they have, you will get an answer between zero to six. It seems that since child they are taught about this, to be careful with whom you trust because people are bad, really bad (sometimes). At the beginning I thought it was because of the oppression during soviet times, when you had to take care of the spies all the time. The person close to you could be one and give you trouble. Actually, this happens in China nowadays and I was shocked when a Chinese intern told me this. Some Latin American countries lived a similar situation but with less repression. Also, the fewer the friends, better the quality of friendship.
Usually it takes a lot of time to become friend with a Lithuanian, I asked and usually it takes years and years and years. I got curious and asked if the same happens for a sentimental relationship, the answer I got was: It usually take a few months (2 or 3). It is interesting to see that it might be easier to get a girlfriend than a friend.
Since I have latin blood, I usually friendzone everyone, so if we meet one night, got totally drunk, watch a football game together or got into a fight, then I would consider you my friend. But Lithuania made me change this concept, and made me rethink. Maybe I don’t have my friends, but they are all pažįstamai….or spies.
I consider to have made many friends while living in Lithuania, from many nationalities, religions, colors, mindsets, sexual orientation, real ones and virtual ones. They added a lot of value to my life and I wish to see them again someday. Unfortunately because most of us were on internship and our time together was short, but we enjoy it (A LOT). We will always have Lithuania in our hearts.
Lietuva Per Sempre
Check my other posts related to Lithuania:)
#1 Work Enviroment
#2 Cultural Shocks
#3 More Cultural Shocks
#4 Kissing, streets, sun and soviet times
#5 Girls Girls Girls !!
#6 Food
#7 You are (not) my friend
#8 Beach walk, flowers, quiz and mosquitoes
#9 Russia
Life in Lithuania & Eurotrips 
Hahaha, that’s really interesting! It’s about the same in Poland and I’ve never really thought about the reasons of it but the spy-protection might be just right! 🙂 The direct translation of the word ‘friend’ to Polish is ‘przyjaciel’ and that’s a word we use for 2-3 people in our life while in English a guy met on yesterday’s party is already your friend! Not mentioning Latin America where you drag someone you’ve met an hour ago to a family party and introduce them to your whole family! A tiny culture difference! 😉 As for the relationships… You know, family was the basis of survival in the Soviet times, not friends (read: spies). If you get into a relationship with someone, they’re becoming your possible husband/wife so of course they deserve more trust! 🙂 But if it’s so difficult to be friendzoned in Lithuania and so easy to begin a romantic relationship… Shouldn’t that be like the best news ever for a young Latino man? ;))
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WOW, it makes sense what you said about family. Also when I went to the East Germany museum in Berlin I read about how people used to get married at a very young age at those times and be in a hurry to build families. Well, Latino man have a lot of advantages in Eastern Europe, is true 😀
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Hey 🙂 I always find it interesting to read your blog.
I’m a Lithuanian myself living in the Netherlands as a foreigner. Actually, what you’re saying about making friends exists everywhere in Europe, I believe (except Southern parts, I guess). However, it’s not just about making friends. For us a ‘friend’ literally means something. We don’t call people a friend if we don’t know him well or we don’t communicate with him much. We have a different word for it, which has a meaning that I know this person, he/she can be cool and awesome, but I don’t know him so well. Basically when you know a person well (not in terms on time, but in terms how depth), you call him/her a friend and then that person is someone who would do everything for you and the other way around. We know everything about each other then, literally, everything. I think it’s just a difference in definition, as we don’t define everyone we know as a friend 🙂
I hope you had a great time in LT and you’ll come back soon 🙂
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Thanks for your comment Ruta 😉
Latin people usually friendzone everyone 😀
Do you have any real friends in the Netherlands ? 🙂
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You’re welcome 😉 I hope you’ll also visit the Netherlands, it’s an interesting and quite controversial country to live in. Speaking of people, they tend to be very nice with tourists and they literally don’t care of who you are. Also, everybody speaks English. But you see everything from a different perspective when you start living here. There are a lot of unwritten rules how you have to behave, so then they won’t exclude you from their cycle. Making friends here is very difficult, because people tend to communicate mostly with their current family members, friends and in general they don’t like foreigners living here (especially if you don’t speak Dutch). I made a few real friends here just because I try to participate everywhere and initiate conversations with people myself 🙂 More Latin than Lithuanian, I guess 😀
Hope you’re having (or had) a great Eurotrip! 🙂
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Hahaahahh more Latin than Lithuanian 😀 I was in Amsterdam. Pretty interesting and windy city. I think the only “unwritten rule” I noticed is to not take picture of Red Light district girls
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Really liked this one mi fren jejeje 🙂
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