Lietuva in brief - 2011-08-25

Eastern Europeans fall in love more quickly than Americans, according to a new study cited by livescience.com, reports ELTA. The findings showed that Americans frequently cited friendship as a key part of romantic love, while Russians and Lithuanians rarely mentioned it. The researchers surveyed 1,157 adults from the United States, Russia and Lithuania. Participants were asked, “What do you associate with romantic love?” About 90 percent of the Lithuanian respondents answered: falling in love within a month of meeting one another, with 39 percent falling in love within a matter of days. By comparison, 58 percent of the Americans indicated they fell in love within two months to a year. Most of the Eastern Europeans viewed romantic love as fleeting. “The idea that romantic love was temporary and inconsequential was frequently cited by Lithuanians and Russians, but not by U.S. respondents.” Eastern Europe participants also referred to romantic love as “a stage,” “unreal” and a “fairytale.” The study was carried out by the State University of New York at New Paltz and Russia’s Moscow State University for the Humanities.

Polish prosecutors said on Aug. 23 that they were investigating vandalism to a Lithuanian monument and street signs in Punsk, a village where Lithuanian minorities live amid long-standing tensions with Poles, reports dpa. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said “We will repair the damage. Minorities have a right to signs in two languages.” Signs are both in Polish and Lithuanian in Punsk, which is 5 kilometers from the Lithuanian border and where an estimated 80 percent of the population is Lithuanian. Commentators said the act might have been revenge for a similar incident on the Lithuanian side of the border, where Polish-language signs were removed. Vilnius and Warsaw have good diplomatic relations, but tensions sometimes surface that stem from the period between the two world wars. Poland and Lithuania at that time had competing claims to the Vilnius region, which is now the Lithuanian capital.