Top Utenos Apskritis hotels
Utenos Apskritis is famous for it's lakes, great part of them are in Moletai regional municipality, though some of main ones, like Tauragnas or Dukstas, are elsewhere too. If you go to Utenos Apskritis because of it's lakes, go and look around at first. You'll be able to find a place to stay which will suit you - since there are many lakes, of different sizes, both somewhat touristed and almost abandoned. To many of them there is a free path for everybody.
A beutiful small town, Anyksciai is famous for novel written about it's forest and also because of huge stone, second largest in Lithuania, called Puntukas. It is of 100 cubical meters size. It's history however is even more interesting, as unlike other huge stones, it was visible during all the times. In pagan times, pagans considered Puntukas holy, and held various rituals nearby. The name is called after some warrior Puntukas, who was burned here in pagan times. There are some kind of markings on stone. There is a legend that those supposedly are devil's fingers - supposedly devil was carrying the stone and dropped it.Also in the mid-XX age new markings were done on the stone - faces of Steponas Darius and Stasys Girënas - first Lithuanian pilots who flew over Atlantic. Their words are also put there.
Ignalina Nuclear Power plant, which is few kilometers to the east of Visaginas, has the most powerful reactors in the world. It was designed to be most powerful world's power plant also, but in the middle of building it was understood that there won't be enough water in nearby lake to cool down 4 reactors, so instead only 2 of them were built, thus power plant in Japan, having 10 reactors, is now the most powerful in the world overally. Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant generates 82% of states power even when just 1/10 of it's capacity is used, much energy is exported also. Lithuania has the highest percent of nuclear energy usage in the world, surpassing France by 5%.
This city is very atypical to Lithuania. It was built by Soviet government just to house workers of Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, which was built nearby. Because Lithuanians weren't trusted to work in such building, many Russians were sent here instead, as well as some Byelorussians and Ukraineans. Currently Russians makes up over 70% of city's population, and this is the only such case in Lithuania. Russian language is publically used in Visaginas and documents are also permitted to be written in it, sadly many people doesn't knows Lithuanian.Unfortunately, as ordered by European Union, the INPP will have to be closed, meaning a huge number of Visaginas's citizens will loose jobs, and due to the fact that they doesn't knows Lithuanian it'll be hard for them to find jobs elsewhere. There are also huge enviroimental problems on where to put radioactive waste after plant will be closed....
A traditional event takes place in Dusetos, a small town near Sartai lake, each winter. The race of horces is a tradition and should be organised on Sartai lake - lately, however, due to greenhouse effect, it's ice is rarely of required strenght.In the evening before race the thickness of ice is tested, and if it's decided that it would be unsafe to have race on lake, the race is moved to hippodrome of Dusetos instead. In both cases the race attracts many spectators however. Horse races aren't popular in Lithuania unlike Great Britain for example, so this is probably the only possibility to see it. Sartai horse race is very traditional, it's tradition comes back from times before world wars. Up till 1997 every president of independent Lithuania used to take part in the race also, tradition was broken by president Adamkus, who wasn't enthusiastic about horses. Sartai horse race still...
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