The Best Tourist and Travel Guide to various holiday destinations around the globe
If you like swimming, snorkeling, diving, sun bathing and reading books, the Maldives will be your favorite destination anyway. The local “Ocean Venture Diving School” (under German management) has a good reputation and offers frequent diving tours to the south and east (Biyadoo area). O Read More
Meals are served in buffet form in the “Palm Grove” Restaurant. Every week there are a few different “theme buffets” – including one really good curry buffet where the cooks are allowed to show off their talents. Spicy dhal curry, fish curry, chicken curry with nan brea Read More
Fihalhohi was first opened in 1984 with major reconstructions in the late `90s. You have two types of rooms, the original “standard” and “superior” (adding air conditioning and a fridge to the “standard”) rooms and the new, highly comfortable “deluxe” Read More
Just like most of the Maldive islands, Fihalhohi is a very small spot – measuring just a few hundred meters all over. You can surround the island taking a walk around the at the beach in just about 12-15 minutes – so if you’re looking for a place with much action and things going o Read More
The Macedonian language belongs to the Slavic group of languages. It is closely related to Serbian and Bulgarian, but it is not a dialect of neither one of them, but a language on its own.
The first Slavic language used for literary purposes was Old Church Slavonic, written in the Cyrillic alphabet devised by the Macedonian missionaries Cyril and Methodius in the 9th century. As individual alphabets were later developed for the various Slavic languages, the choice was made entirely by religion. Orthodox Macedonians adopted the Cyrillic alphabet, which you can see in the text above.
It was in 1950 that the then professor of London University, Reginald de Bray stated unequivocally in his book “Guide to the Slavonic Languages”, that – “By an irony of history the people who ancestors gave to the Slavs their first literary language, were the last to have their modern language recognized as a separate Slavonic language, distinct from the neighboring Serbian and Bulgarian.” Mr. de Bray also put forward in his chapter on “Old Slavonic” that – “The first writings in Old Slavonic are now generally considered by philosophers to have been in the language of the Slavs of Macedonia of the second half of the ninth century”.
The Republic of Macedonia is located on the Balkan peninsula in Southeastern Europe. The territory of republic is located between 40 deg 50′ and 42 deg 20′ north latitude and 20 deg 27′30” and 23 deg 05′, east longitude. It is part of the larger geographic region of Read More
he society of Medieval Lithuania was a rural society, while the towns just began to emerge.
During the early Middle Ages (5–11th centuries) the chiefdoms were emerging in the territory of Lithuania. This process is reflected in “ducal” graves which appeared in the 5–6th centuries. This highest social stratum in about 11th century began to transform itself to the real dukes which were maintained by taxpayers. Until the end of the 13th century there were a lot of minor dukes – every district was headed by a separate local duke occupying place of a chief of an earlier period. These dukes were subjects to the dukes of lands, and since the creation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (c. 1183) – to the Grand Duke. In the 14th century the district dukes were replaced by the stewards, called tivuns (tij?nai). Tivun vas a representative of the sovereign, administrator of a district and judge.
Traidenis
(1270-1282)
After the death of Mindaugas in 1263 there was a period of civil unrest, in which there were three Grand Dukes until Traidenis took power in 1270. These three were:
-Trenoita (1263-1265)
-Vaisvilkas (1265-1268)
-Svarnas (1268-1269)
Traidenis was one of the most prominent rulers between the time of Mindaugas and the accession of Grand Duke Gediminas in 1316. Though unclear as to how Traidenis came to power, his accession ended the seven year period of unrest.
Traidenis followed Mindaugas’ two main policies -internal consolidation of the State, and expansion into Eastern Slavic lands. Unlike Mindaugas’, who converted to Christianity in hopes of deflecting the Teutons, Traidenis remained Pagan.
Traidenis devoted much of his reign to unifying the various Lithuanian tribes against the incursion of the Teutonic Knights. As well, he actively encouraged other Baltic Peoples, such as the Semigallians, Jotvingians and Prussians to resist the Order..
Mindaugas was the first, and only, King of Lithuania and the one to first introduce Christianity to the country.
Little is known about Mindaugas’ origins, except that he was one of 20 powerful Lithuanian princes. Even before his reign began, the emerging centre of Lithuania was in the Trakai/Vilnius region.
Against the ever encroaching Teutonic Order, Mindaugas united the various princes into a single state and was formally recognized as the ruler, and was crowned by the Pope. There were many reasons for Mindaugas’s conversion to Christianity and his drive to unite the various regions. One of the most paramount was to avoid the same fate as the Prussians – who were conquered by the Teutonic Order, which was searching for lands for themselves. The Prussians, as a culture, eventually died out, after several centuries of assimilation. With the acceptance of Christianity, Mindaugas was hoping that this would stop a Crusading order from “enforcing” the “true and proper faith” onto the heathen-Lithuanians. In the end, this did not happen, there was still military pressure.
Albania, anciently known as Illyria, and occupying a large part of the Western Balkans, lost its independence in 169 BC, when Gent, king of the Illyrians, was defeated and captured by the Romans at Shkodra. But in the two thousand years that their land was ruled by foreigners, Albanians lost neither Read More
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