IT TOOK Thomas Mann just a few days to fall for the Curonian Spit. The "indescribable beauty" of this geographical oddity, a skinny stretch of land curving from Lithuania's west coast to what is today the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, so enthralled the German author and his wife during a holiday in 1929 that they decided to build a summer house on its coast. The best part of a century later the view has hardly been enhanced by the Independence, a vast floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal that sailed into the nearby port of Klaipeda in 2014. The ship rarely leaves harbour, thanks to what Rimas Rusinas, the terminal's operations manager, politely calls Lithuania's "interesting neighbours". But as the country prepares to mark a centenary of restored statehood on February 16th, for visitors contemplating its turbulent history there are worse places to start.
For some countries independence is about military might or economic heft. For Lithuania it means...
The Economist: Europe