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100 hot air balloons fly for Lithuania’s 100th birthday
KAUNAS, Lithuania, July 8, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – One hundred hot air balloons
floated over Lithuania’s second city of Kaunas on Saturday to mark 100 years
of the Baltic state’s independence.
“The first hot air balloon festival was in 1988 during Soviet times when
flying balloons was formally forbidden, but no one could keep us on the
ground,” organiser Gintaras Surkus, a pioneer of the activity in Lithuania,
told AFP.
One balloon flew a 100-metre-long national flag, while others were in
shapes including hearts and cats.
“Hot air balloons are associated with the idea of freedom,” Lukas
Mikelevic, a 23-year-old psychology student who is also a balloon and
aeroplane pilot, told AFP before launching.
“So many balloons taking off from the city centre — it’s unheard of,” he
added.
Poles, Latvians, Estonians and Chinese enthusiasts also came to fly their
balloons in Kaunas.
Until World War I, Lithuania was a province of the Russian empire, which
sought to crush nationalism and even banned the Lithuanian alphabet.
The Lithuanian council declared independence on February 16, 1918, when the
country was still under German occupation.
Brief wars with Bolsheviks and Poles followed before Lithuania won
international recognition in the following years.
Modern Lithuania was an independent nation between the two World Wars. Then
the Soviet Union invaded in 1940, Nazi Germany invaded in 1941, and the
Soviets returned in 1944.
Democracy campaigners launched an independence drive in the 1980s that
eventually made it the first Soviet republic to declare independence in March
1990.
Lithuania finally won recognition from Moscow after the failed coup by
hardliners in the Soviet capital in August 1991.
In 2004, Lithuania’s pro-Western drive culminated with EU and NATO
membership. In 2015, the Baltic state of 2.9 million people adopted the euro.
BSS/AFP/MSY/0903 hrs