Europe OVERVIEW
One may try to squeeze Europe in a nutshell but it's all in vain. For how to speak of Belgian chocolate, French
haute couture
and Russian
matrioshki
without due honors to Italian masterpieces, the Greek Parthenon or German super-vehicles, and without at least a humble mention of Albanian wine, Polish hearty cuisine and English tea. Needless to say, the Swiss would forever bear a grudge for not listing their dairy products, the Dutch scoff at any list short of their endless cycle lanes, and the Spanish wonder who in their right mind would not like to witness the corrida. And we're only talking about the man-made attractions.
Yet this most flamboyant patchwork of 50 nationalities makes for 10 million kilometers square of a dazzling landscape that there's no end to extolling. From the snow-capped alpine peaks and Norwegian fjords to Icelandic geysers and Croatian lakes, let alone Swedish rivers clean enough to drink from and the pristine Portuguese coast adored by surfers- Europe's diversity offers virtually unlimited opportunities for exploration even for its residents. As the physical division between Eastern and Western Europe has collapsed, and the mental one is consistently melting away, the continent is all yours for the taking, with all its shortcomings and blessings, with examples of both utmost poverty and indecent wealth, with buzzing capitals and bucolic villages steeped in folklore. It's a stunningly charming land, where man coexists with nature, myth mixes with history, form rivals function, and the ancient complements the modern.
And God knows what else.
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