Surgeons at a hospital in Lithuania spent over three hours saving the life of a man who, for some reason, had swallowed more than a kilogram of metallic objects over the last month.

Lithuanian media recently reported the shocking case of a man who arrived at the Klaipėda University Hospital in the Baltic port of Klaipeda complaining of severe abdominal pain but conveniently failed to mention that he had swallows over a kilogram of metal objects over the last 30 days. An X-ray examination revealed that the man’s stomach was full of metal objects of all shapes and sizes, including nails, screws, and blades. They prepped the man, whose identity has not been revealed, for emergency surgery and spent over 3 hours removing the metal objects.

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Lithuanian media recently reported the bizarre case of a man who locked his wife in the bathroom and refused to let her out, because she may have been infected with the dreaded coronavirus wreaking havoc around the world.

On Wednesday, February 26th,  at around 8:35pm, police in Vilnius, Lithuania, received a distress call from a woman in the city’s Antakalnis upscale neighborhood, who claimed to have been locked in her home bathroom by her husband and two adult sons. A police crew was directed to the location of the call, but when they arrived on the scene, they quickly realized that this wasn’t the domestic dispute… The husband casually told police that he had indeed locked his wife in the bathroom, but only to prevent getting infected with the coronavirus.

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A young Lithuanian couple recently got their five minutes of online fame after spending a whole day replacing over 100 framed stock photos at an IKEA store in Vilnius with photos of themselves without attracting any attention from the staff.

Erikas Mališauskas and his girlfriend found the stock photos at their local IKEA in Vilnius, Lithuania, so boring that they decided to do something about them. Last week, the young couple did a little reconnaissance in the furniture super-store and counted over 100 framed stock photos that needed replacing. It was more than they expected, but luckily their Instagram archive provided more than enough images of themselves to choose from. Next, they went to a local shop to print some of their social media photos, and on Saturday they went back to IKEA to make it their own, so to speak.

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Every year, the people of New Town, in Panevėžys, Lithuania, hold an annual festival where tall intricate sculptures made completely out of straws are displayed for the entire month of October in a temporary Straw Sculpture Park. At the end of the month, the straw sculptures are burned to the ground to mark the transition from the animated summer to the cold winter.

14 rolls of hay, each weighting half a ton and 10 km of rope have been used to build these imposing straw installations, this year. Everything is made out of straws including the fence, the very tall entrance and, of course, the sculptures themselves which have a different theme every year. Last year, the villagers decided on a musical theme and designed each sculpture after a musical instrument. Among other attractions, there was a very accurate replica of a piano, a straw saxophone and straw balalaika – a triangular shaped stringed instrument from Russia.

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Covered with over 100,000 crosses of different sizes, Lithuania’s Hill of Crosses is both a symbol of the country’s nationalism and an international pilgrimage site.

Located 12 kilometers north of the small industrial city of Šiauliai, the Hill of Crosses is believed to date back to the 14th century, during the occupation of the Teutonic Knights. The tradition of placing crosses began as a symbol of the people’s fight for independence and their fight against foreign invaders, and evolved into a struggle of Lithuanian Catholicism against oppression. During the peasant uprising that lasted between 1831 and 1863, people erected crosses on the hill, in protest, and by 1895 there were around 150 of them on the site. By 1940, the number of large crosses grew to 400, surrounded by many other smaller ones.

Occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II, Šiauliai and the Hill of Crosses suffered significant damage when the Soviets took over, at the end of the conflict. The communist regime repeatedly removed all the crosses and leveled the hill three times, in 1961, 1973 and 1975, burning the wooden crosses and turning metal ones into scrap metal. The area was covered with waste and sewage to discourage locals from returning, but the Hill of Crosses was a symbol of Lithuanian nationalism and the pilgrims from all over the country quickly came back to the hill after each desecration, to place even more crosses. Many of them risked their lives sneaking past armed guards and through barbed wire fences to show their commitment to national struggle. The Soviet’s finally got the message and in 1985, the Hill of Crosses was finally left in peace, and its reputation rapidly spread throughout the Christian world.

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A shopping mall in Vilnius, Lithuania, decided to surprise its shoppers on Valentine’s Day by offering them a unique visual treat – a room made entirely of dark and white chocolate.

“We wanted to create something special for Valentine’s Day. The chocolate room looks just like a traditional Lithuanian sitting-room,” Frederikas Jansonas, spokesman for the Akropolis shopping mall, said about the 17-square-meter space from floor to ceiling, and adorned with chocolate furniture and interior decorations, such as edible candlesticks, books, flowers and paintings.

A team of seven Lithuanian food artists used 300 kilograms (661 pounds) of chocolate to create this one-of-akind chocolate room, which sculptor Mindaugas Tendziagolskis says is “the best place for a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner”. What’s for dinner, you ask? Well, just look around and I’m sure the answer will come to you naturally.

But visitors will have to wait a little longer to have a taste of the chocolate room, as it will remain on display through March 8th – International Women’s Day – when it will be broken into pieces and distributed to visitors.

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