Discover Lithuania from hot air balloon

The first thing what visitors see in Lithuania pavilion is acomposition of well known artist Vytautas Karciauskas named "I can". The ideais taken from famous painting of Leonardo da Vinci "Vitruvian Man". It symbolisesharmony and balance – people can climb on and swing on a little bit with handswide open for universe. And this is only a little piece of the artist's intentions – he isplaning to build a huge economic and cultural center in a shape of this model.

The next point is our infoterminals – the so called database ofLithuania – here visitor can find general and particular information about Lithuania,for example nature, culture, economics and investment, science, sport, leisureand even games.

The theme of our pavlion is Discover Lithuania from hot air balloon. The reason why we have chosen hot air ballon is simple: Vilnius is one of a fewcapitals in Europe over which flights in hot air baloons are available. You caneven take off from the center of Vilnius. The hot air baloon sport is becomingmore and more popular and Lithuania has the biggest amount of hot air ballonsin comparison with the number of our populiation. Lithuania is among firstcountries in the world which has mostly women pilots.

When you are inside the hot air balloon you can enjoy images of Vilnius. Here is also another interesting point – the wish stone called "Stebuklas" ("The Magic"). As The Netherlands brought the statue of Mermaid, wetook our original magical stone from the cathedral square of Vilnius. All youneed to do is to climb on it, make a wish, turn around and your wish will cometrue. And we also offer for our visitors to write their wishes down and throwinto the box.

We are proud of our national heritage food and we brought it here – wehave national heritage restaurant. We are offering for our visitors to tasteour national food and of course our national beer - which they really enjoy.

Souvenir shop mainly sells amber and stamps – we brought the poststamp, especially made for EXPO. Visitors can buy a postcard and a stamp andthrow it into the special postbox. All letters will be taken to Lithuania,stamped and will come back to China for the recipients.

And the last but not least – our basketball corner. Basketball is thesecond religion in Lithuania and visitors here are attracted to try theirthrowing skills. Chinesepeople mostly know only a little about Lithuania andmainly as a country of basketball because a few years ago the coach of Chinanational men basketball team was Lithuanian - Jonas Kazlauskas. And in 2011 Lithuania will host Europe basketballchampionship.

Source: Global Times
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