Lithuania’s Unique Visual Communication Method: Dots for Days [Photos]

Businesses use colored dots and squares to show their opening days and hours in this Baltic republic.

Walking through the streets of Lithuania, I couldn’t help but notice something totally bizarre and fascinating: when indicating which days and hours they are open, businesses tend to use a visual display of colored dots or squares, with the color—or lack of color, or a slash—indicating whether a business is open or closed.

This means: closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

Sometimes they don’t include letter abbreviations for days of the week, instead using roman numerals: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII:

This means: closed Mondays.

Sometimes, they dispense with day labels altogether—instead using a visual separation between weekdays and weekends:

This means: weekdays open 10am–8pm, Saturdays open 10am–6pm, closed Sundays.

Another sign that I found used a change in color to indicate both which days were the weekend and also the fact that those days had reduced hours:

This means: weekdays open 8am–6pm, Saturdays open 10am–4pm, Sundays open 10am–3pm.

Sometimes they use a partially-filled dot to show that there are reduced hours on a certain day:

This means: early closing on Saturdays and closed on Sundays.

At one place I went to, they didn’t have any labels for days of the week, but did still use roman numerals—for months:

This means: May through September, open 7 days/week; March/April and October/November, open every day except Monday; December through February, open every day except Monday and Tuesday.

So far I’ve been to 36 countries across multiple continents and have never seen anything like this anywhere else. I just couldn’t help thinking to myself: What the heck… this is so bizarre!

I have no idea why they do this, and haven’t been able to find any information online. Perhaps it simply developed as a cultural custom and the locals don’t even notice.

To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about it. One the one hand, it’s sort of a cool visual method of communication. On the other hand, I find it kind of a headache to look at and try to figure out, especially if there are no day labels or separation between weekdays and weekends—though Lithuanians are probably used to it, so maybe it’s no problem for them.

Nevertheless, it’s delightfully fascinating. 🙂

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By the way: Lithuania is awesome, and I highly recommend visiting if you get the chance!

The capital, Vilnius, has so many cozy streets with historic buildings and outdoor cafés.

Gediminas Avenue, one of the main streets in Vilnius.

St. Anne’s Church, a cool brick Gothic church in Vilnius.

Looking over central areas of Vilnius from the Bell Tower of Vilnius Cathedral.

Trakai Island Castle is a cool spot to take your kids.

Klaipeda, the third-largest city, is right by the coast and has a nice river going through it.

Klaipeda’s city center has lots of cobblestone streets.

The Palanga Amber Museum is surrounded by the Palanga Botanical Garden.

The Palanga Botanical Garden is quite pretty.

The seaside town of Palanga has a spot with rows of benches facing the ocean, because why limit it to just one row?

Vilnius has a ton of murals.

I stumbled across some sort of concert in a park in Vilnius.

Paupys, a trendy new area of Vilnius.

There’s a lot of cool contemporary architecture. This is in the town of Palanga.

One of the most delightful things about visiting other countries is getting to see the cultural differences.

Whenever I visit a new country, I always keep a note on my phone of all the things I observe that are different from home. I encourage you to do it too! It’s so fascinating to be able to look back later.

Have you noticed anything totally fascinating or bizarre when traveling? Let me know in the comments.