When you come home or visit somebody, you come home and you take your shoes out. So you don't walk anywhere, even in your house with shoes. So that would be the one cultural tip. Another one, yes, you don't shake the hands between the door, you know, when you're standing between the doors. And you don't whistle in the house. It's very bad to whistle. It brings bad spirits into the house and it can become a problem for the family.
Lithuanians don't put books on the ground. Never, ever put your book on the ground. It's kind of a sign of disrespect. Another thing is that you don't put your bags on the ground. You either hang them up or just like put them on a couch or something. They think like your money drains out of the bag or something like that. I can't really remember, but another culture tip is not to whistle indoors. I can't whistle, so that was never a problem for me, but never whistle indoors because they think that either one, you're whistling away all your money or two, you're inviting demons into their house through whistling. Don't know. Yeah, but you'll figure some out when you're over there and just talk to the people. They're great.
In Lithuania, they kind of always sound like they're yelling and arguing with each other. So you might go to church your first Sunday, and then you might think there's a huge amount of contention, but it turns out they were just having a normal conversation. And the same thing, you might talk to someone on the street who seems like they're getting super offended or defensive, in reality, they're just being normal. They are a really bold, loud and disagreeable culture, I guess you could say. So don't don't be worried if people are getting loud or sound like they're arguing. It's usually it usually means they're having a normal conversation. And it also means you have to learn to get better at interrupting people and kind of just letting your voice be heard.
In Lithuania, the big cultural no-no to not do is to shake your hands over the threshold of a door. The way I've been taught this is that basically it invites demons into your house who will slowly drain your bank account and leave you penniless and broke. So do not shake your hands over the threshold of a door, people will get actually really offended by that. Another thing to do not knock on the door three times. This one's actually a little bit more understandable because a lot of people, especially the older population, do suffer PTSD from the Soviet occupation and that's how they conducted their midnight raids or interrogations or anything like that. They would knock on the door three times really heavily, so don't do that. They also do not believe in AC, so you're going to sit in a lot of like really hot apartments during the summer and they just don't have it because they believe that the government put chemicals in the machines to kill people faster so that there'll be more pensions for the older population. Really weird, I know, but just a little cultural quirks I kind of enjoyed actually.