For those on Twitter after #London2012 beach volleyball game With USA, #whereislatvia and #whoslatvia – here are some facts about Latvia.
- Latvia is located here;
- Area: 64,589 km2 (24,938 sq mi);
- Border: 2,364 km (1468 miles) of which 1/4 is a sandy beach of Baltic sea – so we have plenty of space to play beach volleyball;
- Population: 2.2 million (of which 61% are Latvians);
- Language: Latvian (one of two Baltic languages left in the world);
- Neighboring: Estonia, Russia, Belarus, Lithuania;
- Independence was declared in 1918 – it’s 94 years old, of which 50 years it was occupied by USSR and Nazis (from 1940-1990) – WWII sucked big time for us;
- We have 5th fastest internet download speed available to average user in the world (see here) – yeah we beat USA even in this game.
Actually the internet thing is more related to the fact, that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have basically the same connection speed to the rest of the world, but, as you can see Estonia (population: 1.3 million) is not even on the list there, as they are more advanced in IT (think, Skype, for example) than we are, and Lithuania might be even less advanced (and their population is whopping 3.1 million), as their internet speed is on the 4th place. But in reality, I think, that Estonians are just downloading more porn and thus slowing down their internet. 🙂