Funny thing is that I've learned most about my country, while I have been away from it.

I think that's probably common. A lot of us don't appreciate what we have until it's gone or we take it for granted because we're so used to it.

Maybe it's because I grew up in the US and, according to the rest of the world, we're arrogant nationalists and self-obsessed, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a healthy respect for your own culture. I find it sad how much so many Europeans seem to despise their own history or disregard it completely. Europeans existed before the Nazis, colonialists, and Soviets. It feels like everyone reduces the whole of European history to the worst aspects while ignoring all the good things and the cool history that came before all the horrible shit.

There is so much ancient history here and ancient European tribes and cultures were pretty damn interesting. I know quite a few people that think European tribes were primitive and stupid, but then have never heard of things Like the neolithic circular enclosures around Europe which were complicated astronomical observatories, or these crazy Golden Hats which were recently discovered to actually be lunisolar calendars, or this 6000 year old temple in Ukraine. There are countless discoveries like this all over Europe. I mean, I couldn't make a golden hate that functioned as a complex calendar if my life depended on it. It's pretty awesome and admirable.

Another thing that bothers me, especially being half German, is how people seem to look down on ancient mythology due to thousands of years of demonization or how Germanic mythology is associated with Nazis and so a lot of people are actually ashamed of it. These tales existed long before any of those psychos and they are really interesting if you understand how to interpret them. And many of these myths were suppressed by oppressive rulers in quite a few nations so I think it’s kind of shameful that more people don’t learn about them now that we have the freedom to do so. We all have a right to our own history. A lot of these tales are also amazing. For example, after seeing the picture you linked I started reading through Latvian mythology and came across this information about Latvian celestial deities:

Her path leads her across the mountain of sky to the sea, which is sometimes interpreted as a symbolic representation of the sky or cosmic ocean.[2][7] The sea and other bodies of water, including rivers, especially Daugava, seem to mark the boundary between worlds of the living and the dead. In Latvian, the word for "the world" is derived from the word for "the sun" and these worlds are referred to as "this sun" and "that sun". Therefore it seems that Saule is also closely related to the concept of death.[6][7] She apparently carries the souls of the dead across the sea to the world of the dead. Her daily movement can thus be related to the cycle of human life with her being reborn every day.

On the path of the sun, in or by the water, often on an island or rock in middle of the seas, is the Austras koks (tree of dawn) thought to represent world tree or axis mundi, it is usually described as a tree, but can also be variety of other plants or even objects.[2][7] Nobody has ever seen the tree, although folklore purports that many have searched all their lives.[6] Still it has been suggested that its natural counterpart might be the polar star [7] or the Milky Way.[2] It has also been proposed it might be symbol of a year.[8] The tree is related to celestial wedding mythos in which sun or her daughter is courted by Dieva dēli (sons of god), Auseklis (Venus) or Pērkons (Thunder).[7]

I think that way of seeing the world is seriously beautiful. They personified and deified the sun, stars, milky way, forces of nature, and created intricate stories about them that managed to survive into modern times. They looked at the sky and didn’t see inanimate flaming balls of gas and rocky lifeless orbs, they saw powerful celestial beings who lived lives, went on adventures, and so on. Rivers were considered to be alive and had their own unique stories. The same with mountains. There’s no hate in that - just admiration for the forces of nature that they encoded into myth so they could pass on knowledge of astronomy and nature to their descendants. I think it's cool.