50 Fun Facts About Eastern Europe

Which river touches ten countries and flows through four national capitals, more than any other river in the world?

The Danube begins in the German town of Donaueschingen and ends in a delta on the far side of the continent. Only one river in Europe is longer.

Which landlocked country, home of the Rubik's Cube, speaks a language unrelated to any of its neighbours' tongues?

Hungary's language is a distant relative of Finnish, with no kinship to the tongues spoken across any of its borders.

Which nuclear power plant near the city of Pripyat exploded in April 1986, forcing tens of thousands to evacuate?

Chernobyl is one of only two nuclear accidents ever rated at the maximum severity, alongside Fukushima in 2011. The first 49,000 people were moved out 36 hours after the blast.

Which region, the home of Count Dracula in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, draws tourists to the turrets of Bran Castle?

Transylvania owes its vampire fame to a man who never saw it: Bram Stoker wrote Dracula without ever visiting Eastern Europe.

Which Russian city grew up around the Kremlin, a walled fortress beside Red Square and St. Basil's Cathedral?

Moscow has the famous one, but a kremlin is simply the fortified central complex of a historic Russian city, and many other cities have their own.

Which everyday word entered English from R.U.R., a 1920 science-fiction play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek?

Robot comes from the Czech word robota, the forced labour that serfs owed their lords. Karel Čapek said his brother Josef was the word's true inventor.

Which mountain range, running 2,500 km south from Russia's Arctic coast, traditionally divides Europe from Asia?

The Urals are among the world's oldest surviving mountain ranges, with an estimated age of 250 to 300 million years.

Which Czech capital, nicknamed the 'City of a Hundred Spires', has an astronomical clock dating back to 1410?

Prague long ago outgrew its nickname: a 19th-century mathematician counted the hundred spires, and the city's tourist office has since put the figure at about 500.

Which country's soldiers, serving France in the 1600s, wore the knotted neck scarves that became the necktie?

Croatia celebrates Cravat Day every 18 October. Parisians first called the soldiers' scarf a 'Croat', a name later corrupted to 'cravat'.

Which British statesman said in a 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri, that an 'iron curtain' had descended on Europe?

Winston Churchill gave the speech at a small Missouri college with President Harry Truman in the audience, describing a line that ran from the Baltic to the Adriatic.

Which Baltic Sea country, birthplace of Frédéric Chopin, borders seven neighbours including Germany and Belarus?

Poland sits where it does because the map was redrawn around it: in 1945 the whole country's borders were shifted westwards.

Which Russian city, the imperial capital for two centuries, was called Leningrad for most of the Soviet era?

St Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in 1703 on the site of a captured Swedish fortress, yet it is named after the apostle rather than the tsar.

Which river, the longest in Europe, winds about 3,500 km through Russia before emptying into the Caspian Sea?

The Volga never reaches an ocean, because the Caspian Sea has no outlet. It is widely regarded as the national river of Russia.

Which capital city, formed when three neighbouring towns merged in 1873, sits on more than 100 medicinal hot springs?

Budapest joins the names of two of those towns, Buda and Pest, and bathers have been coming to its springs since ancient times.

Which fabric names both Czechoslovakia's bloodless 1989 revolution and its peaceful 1993 split into two countries?

Velvet was a translator's word: Rita Klímová, who interpreted for the dissidents, coined 'Velvet Revolution', and the 1993 break-up became the 'Velvet Divorce'.

Which country, nicknamed the 'Breadbasket of Europe' for its grain, is the largest lying entirely within Europe?

Ukraine owes the nickname to chernozem, a dark and highly fertile soil. Only Russia is larger, and it spills far beyond Europe into Asia.

Which alphabet, named after a 9th-century Byzantine missionary, is used to write Russian, Serbian and Belarusian?

Cyrillic honours Saint Cyril, yet it was probably his followers who devised it; the script he and his brother Methodius had created was the older Glagolitic.

Which Bosnian capital saw the 1914 assassination that sparked World War I and hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics?

Sarajevo also endured the longest siege of a capital city in modern history, 1,425 days from April 1992 to February 1996.

Which 1,500 km arc of mountains shelters some of Europe's largest populations of brown bears, wolves and lynxes?

The Carpathians rank as Europe's third-longest mountain range, and they are home to more than a third of the continent's plant species.

Which capital on the Vistula River had its Old Town rebuilt from rubble after 1945 and then listed by UNESCO?

Warsaw was about 85% destroyed in the war, Royal Castle included. Its reconstructed Old Town joined the World Heritage list in 1980.

Which country in southeastern Europe speaks a language descended from Latin, closer to Italian than to Russian?

Romania's language evolved from Vulgar Latin dialects that drifted apart from those of western Europe between the 5th and 8th centuries.

Which Baltic country, where the software behind Skype was written, held the first nationwide internet vote in 2005?

Estonia followed its online elections with another first in 2014, when it began offering 'e-residency' to non-residents.

Which country did dictator Enver Hoxha stud with concrete bunkers against an invasion that never came?

Albania was left with bunkers everywhere from mountain passes to city streets; most are derelict, but some have become homes, cafés and storehouses.

Which country, whose first empire dates from 681, is famous for the rose oil distilled in its Rose Valley?

Bulgaria's Rose Valley has grown oil roses for centuries around the town of Kazanlak, where the petals are picked by hand each May and June.

Which capital on both banks of the Dnieper River is home to the Pechersk Lavra, an 11th-century cave monastery?

Kyiv's Lavra has been a leading centre of Eastern Christianity since its foundation, and its name is also translated as the Monastery of the Caves.

Which Serbian capital, birthplace of tennis star Novak Djokovic, has been fought over in 115 wars and razed 44 times?

Belgrade sits on a ridge where the Sava joins a much larger river, a strategic crossroads that explains why so many armies wanted it.

Which Latvian capital, home to a third of Latvia's people, is famed for its Art Nouveau architecture?

Riga's historic centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, noted for its 19th-century wooden buildings as well as its Art Nouveau streets.

Which creature, Europe's heaviest wild land animal, was hunted out of the Białowieża Forest by 1921, then reintroduced?

Bison roam Europe again only because a few animals were kept alive in captivity; by 1996 the species was no longer classed as extinct in the wild.

Which trade union, founded at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk in 1980, swelled to 10 million members by late 1981?

Solidarity was the first independent trade union to win state recognition in a Soviet-bloc country, and its leader Lech Wałęsa received the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize.

Which peninsula, joined to the mainland by the Isthmus of Perekop, hosted the Allied leaders' 1945 Yalta Conference?

Crimea was known as the Tauric Peninsula until early modern times, and the 1945 summit met in three palaces near the resort of Yalta.

Which walled Adriatic city, once the seat of the Republic of Ragusa, became a Game of Thrones filming location?

Dubrovnik is ringed by an unbroken circuit of walls about 1,940 metres long and up to 25 metres high.

Which capital of Slovakia is the only national capital whose territory borders two other countries?

Bratislava sits so close to its western neighbour's capital that Vienna is only about 50 km away.

Which country was, in March 1990, the first of the 15 Soviet republics to declare its independence?

Lithuania broke away first, and the other republics followed over the next 21 months, ending with Kazakhstan in 1991.

Which landlocked former Soviet republic holds the world's largest wine collection in the cellars of Mileștii Mici?

Moldova's Mileștii Mici keeps nearly 2 million bottles in limestone galleries that stretch for 200 km, a record certified by Guinness in 2005.

Which territory, whose capital is Pristina, unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in February 2008?

Kosovo had been under United Nations administration since the war of 1998 and 1999, which ended with the withdrawal of the Yugoslav Army.

Which capital of Belarus lost 80% of its houses in World War II and was rebuilt with grand Stalinist avenues?

Minsk also serves as one of the administrative capitals of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the grouping of former Soviet republics.

Which capital of North Macedonia, largely rebuilt after a 1963 earthquake, was the birthplace of Mother Teresa?

Skopje belonged to the Ottoman Empire when Mother Teresa was born there in 1910, and the 1963 earthquake destroyed about 80% of the city.

Which leader of Yugoslavia defied Stalin so openly that the country was expelled from the Cominform in 1948?

Josip Broz Tito was the only leader to defy Soviet control of the Eastern Bloc during Stalin's lifetime, and he later co-founded the Non-Aligned Movement.

Which bay in Montenegro, named after the walled town on its shore, became a UNESCO World Heritage region in 1979?

The Bay of Kotor is a ria, the drowned valley of the vanished Bokelj River, which once flowed down from the high plateaus of Mount Orjen.

Which lake on Russia's western border, the fifth-largest in Europe, froze over for the 1242 'Battle on the Ice'?

Lake Peipus was the frozen battlefield where the army of the Novgorod Republic met the Teutonic Order on 5 April 1242. Some 30 rivers and streams feed the lake.

Which Russian lake, drained by the Neva River into the Gulf of Finland, is the largest lying entirely in Europe?

Ladoga is the second-largest lake in Russia after Baikal and ranks 14th in the world by area.

Which Russian city on the Baltic, cut off from the rest of Russia, was the German city of Königsberg until 1945?

Kaliningrad was renamed in 1946 after the Bolshevik leader Mikhail Kalinin; its old German name meant 'king's mountain'.

Which city in Bosnia and Herzegovina is famed for a 16th-century Ottoman bridge that was shelled in 1993 and rebuilt?

Mostar takes its name from the mostari, the keepers who guarded the bridge. Suleiman the Magnificent commissioned it in 1557, and the rebuilt span reopened in 2004.

Which city, home to Wawel Castle and one of Europe's largest medieval market squares, was a royal capital until 1596?

Kraków began as a fortified settlement on Wawel Hill around the 8th century, and the castle and cathedral on that hill overlook the Vistula.

Which ancient lake on North Macedonia's border shelters more than 200 species found nowhere else on Earth?

Lake Ohrid is one of Europe's deepest lakes, reaching 288 metres, and its oldest sediments may be 3 to 5 million years old.

Which language family includes Russian, Czech, Serbian and Belarusian among its roughly 315 million speakers?

Slavic languages are conventionally divided into East, South and West subgroups, and their speakers form the largest ethno-linguistic group in Europe.

Which river, the longest in the Czech Republic, has a piece named after it in Smetana's cycle Má vlast?

The Vltava is commonly called the Czech national river, and its name is believed to come from old Germanic words meaning 'wild water'.

Which capital is home to the Palace of the Parliament, the world's heaviest building, ordered by Nicolae Ceaușescu?

Bucharest's palace weighs about 4.1 million tonnes and is the world's largest civilian administrative building, outdone only by the military Pentagon.

Which peninsula, named after a mountain range, gave English a verb for breaking a region into small hostile states?

Balkans as a regional name rests on a mistake: in 1808 the German geographer August Zeune wrongly took one mountain range to dominate all of southeastern Europe.

Which sea between Europe and Asia has deep waters without oxygen, a layer that has preserved ancient shipwrecks?

The Black Sea is the world's largest body of water whose layers never mix, which leaves more than 90% of its deeper volume without oxygen.