Palanga Health School advocates bathing in wintertime, healthy food (grains, vegetables with minimum of meat), gymnastics, and a positive attitude to the surrounding world (respect to others, politeness, no envy).
The godfather of these ideas is Dainius Kepenis. He is the director of this school and president of the Sveikuoliai (Healthy People) movement that espouses identical ideas of healthy living throughout Lithuania.
Some 25,000 people graduated from the Palanga Health School during its 10 years of existence. Seeking health, people visit there from all over Lithuania and from abroad.
"Studies in the school take two weeks. During this time we address obesity and diseases. The two-week course costs 560 litas ($140) and up. Our students live in our school and the price can be different because of the quality of the room where they stay. There were also foreigners in our school from Australia, Uruguay, Germany, Poland, Estonia, Belarus and other countries," Kepenis said.
The Palanga Health School is a profitable organization. Every year it pays 100,000 litas in taxes to the Lithuanian state budget.
The Sveikuoliai movement consists of 52 clubs in various Lithuanian towns and currently has 4,000 members.
"The oldest 'healthy man' and lover of wintertime bathing is Pranas Skersis, 96, from Plunge. The youngest was a two-year-old girl from Panevezys. I'll try to include them into Guinness Record Book," said Vytautas Navaitis, director of the Agency Factum, a Lithuanian agency registering all kinds of weird records and issuing books about them. It also supplies the Guinness Book of World Records with information from Lithuania.
Kepenis organized the festival, "Seal of Palanga 2000" on Feb. 12. "About 1,000 people from all regions of Lithuania came to swim in the Baltic sea," Kepenis said.
There were several foreigners from Estonia, Latvia, the United States and the Russian Kaliningrad enclave, Kepenis said. The most impressive among guests was an old man with a long gray beard from Alaska. The American from the US Williams company working at the Mazeikiu Nafta oil refinery was among this brave 1,000.
"We wanted to register the number of people bathing in icy waters in the Guinness Book of World Records. But the London headquarters of the Guinness Book answered that they register records only when there is a principle of competitiveness. It means that somebody else must appeal for registering this kind of record too," Kepenis said.
He knows that similar mass winterbathing is taking part in Canada. So, maybe the Canadians will challenge the Lithuanians.
The youngest "seal" at this year's festival was a six-year-old boy. The oldest was Antanas Venckus, 86, from Salantai. The average age in the "Palanga Seal 2000" was 40 years. Women were more active - 600 ladies went to swim in the cold waters of the Baltic sea.
Similar mass winterbathing is traditional in Palanga. Such festivals are held each year.
"This year winter was too warm. I liked bathing in festivals of previous years when the water was minus several degrees. Then we made holes in the ice covering the sea and took baths in these holes. Then, a couple of years ago, it was something like 1,500 bathers at the same time. By the way, then it was colder and we bathed completely naked because swimming costumes would freeze to the skin of the body. Nobody was ashamed because bathing is a matter of health. I had an alcohol problem and I was ill before joining the Sveikuoliai movement. I'm healthy man again now," said Algis from Vilnius, participant of "Palanga Seal 2000."
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