POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country?

In politics and in perception, also Russia has its tentacles here as well.
For all practical issues Poland is politically Eastern Europe, if Beloruss or Ukraine become a border country/cordon between west and Russia then Poland cease to be EE.(or if Poland become regional power )

Your thinking about Poland having it's commie past and has been in the Warsaw pact? I would say politically in the 80's Poland (if you can call that commie state Poland lol) then yes Poland was eastern politically. But Poland ain't part of Russia or is Russia's vassal state nor does Poland object Western political alliances such as EU or NATO. It's in it. Time to refresh your mind Ironside :=)

Doesn't matter! EE is a description of political reality now. Regardless of Poland being in EU or NATO, she is still between west and east because of the past but mostly because of her position as a cordon country, between EU and Russia.

Time to go out into the real world Grünewald.

mmmmmmmmyes,and, whats that got to do with anything? France is western europe but its a lot further west to the edge of europe.......East is everything east of the Oder,seemples.

thats geography lesson for you !

Poland is in Eastern Europe, Russia is not in Europe or Asia

Man, I'm just chain pulling...We need better topics, but moderators won't create a a category like 'International News' so we can have better topics...Right now, you could have, say, war between India and Pakistan, but there are no categories to put it in on the forum unless you titled it 'India-Pakistan War: How Will It Affect Poland?'...

In German Map book from 60s that somehow ended in my father's library, published in West Germany, Russia (USSR) is classified as an Asian country only, not even partially part of Europe.

Germans are super.
I use few sites, British and German for the weather forecast, first are a good source, having problem with non existing climate on their isles, second for obsessive need to predict and know the details of everything and mark them down.

So, according to German wetter online, countries are classified like this:



So, Croatia is Sued (South) Europe

Montenegro is EAST Europe, while

Albania is again South Europe.

And they are in line.

I mean do Germans have something against geography?? ;)

Plus, the water temperature is always higher 20 km more north from me in Croatia and thankfully many km south to this place, in Albania.

Maps can be entertaining. I read in some novel about fantasm that included the conspiracy of cartographers all over the world to make the countries of Northern hemisphere in the books larger than they really are compared to the Southern hemisphere states. I still think there is something valuable in that idea ;)

Sorry old chap,hate to disagree with the first Rex Britannia and all that, but you speak from what you anglo saxons call your arse........its in BOTH !!!! (russia that is, in europe and asia...)

OK! Because non of you ignoramuspopulous mentioned an old system of Europe's divide onto Eastern and Western parts - I will do it.

Religion! Each country with prevalent Orthodoxes belongs to Eastern Europe, Catholicism and Protestantism are telling us that you are in Western European country.
Poland belongs to Western Europe according to that old formula.
:)

That is actually fact,look at older maps from the early 20th century and compare the size of africa to a modern map......either the maps were wrong (which they were ) or Africa has grown......

Europe is just a part of the Asian continent anyhow. Mountain ranges do not divide continents seas do. That anyone is angered by Poland being called Eastern European is just proof that the stigma attached to the East by the legacy of Orientalism still survives.

Sailing:) Check cartesian projection and:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection

The only relevant concept for this discussion.

Off topic:

I was thinking about one quote you posted, about hypocrisy being the illness of the West, and suspicion the illness of the East.
Isn't it expected and practical to be suspicious when you are talking to a hypocrite?

On the other hand, isn't it pragmatical to act as a hypocrite to somebody eaten by suspicion?

First sounds better ;)

Truly Barney, distortion of land mass sizes on two dimensional maps are not always conspiracies. The Greenlander Inuit are hardly very influential with cartographers.
Natasa, you are right the Oriental's natural inlination towards suspicion is indeed warranted when thay deal with Westerners.

It is the same thing it is expressed as hypocricy in the West and suspicion in Balkans due to cultural historical reasons.
As for maps I was always delighted by the much greater proportion of earth covered by Greece in ancient maps where Scandinavia was a small island and Africa was smaller than Sahara.

I was just sharing fantasies of one of Serbian postmodern writers, he was playing with the idea that both USSR and USA during cold war shared that cartographic conspiracy project to rule the world, and while USSR was a larger country, USA couldn't win the war using space (territory), USSR won that one, but using time, via technology. Writers dreaming was about USA winning the cold war taking over the more important dimension, time. Space was a wrong goal.

I wasn't serious when I wrote about conspiracy of cartographers, this writer gave a 'realistic' map where USSR and USA had a size of a peanuts for example, compared to South hemisphere. He hardly was seeking the truth, even if he was partially was relying on existing phenomenon.

The name of his essay is 'Virtual Cabala' (Svetislav Basara, 1996), now really :)))

Historically it was extremely difficult and expensive to map land accurately particularly in the North European Plain, the steppes and the North American plaines.

I made a joke the other day but it is hard to see Poland as eastern. There is something about the oriental idea but I dont think it is relevant to modern Poland.

I see so in your slightly twisted logic.

A new coinage: Poland is Central Europe which is a sub-region of Eastern Europe.

I like it.



Central Europe is Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This group of countries is the most prosperous (GDP per capita), stable and developed sub-region of Eastern Europe. All of the countries from this sub-region are members of the European Union (EU), and some of them are, or soon will be, members of the Eurozone, such as Slovenia (since 2007), Slovakia (since 2009) and Estonia (from 2011).

siteselection.com/issues/2010/jul/Eastern-Europe.cfm

Interesting.

I hear often though people refer to Germany as Central Europe and also often Western Europe.

Also many in the "Balkan" region dont like that name. They prefer Southeast Europe.

Yes, it sounds much more neutral. Balkan brings wars and slaughter to mind.

You're in Eastern Europe, yes the central part of Eastern Europe, but not Central Europe. Everybody in the UK, Germany Norway, and Western Europe sees you as Eastern Europe, including the media here in England.

Eastern Europe...end of discussion.

Just to add. In these days Baltic states like to show their self as northern countries. Especial Estonia.


It depends who is positioning and by what criteria. For example geographically center of Europe is in south eastern part of Lithuania.
From the moment Poland became member of EU it stopped being eastern country in political map.

If you see Poland as eastern country then it is your problem... end of discussion. :)

Central. For a few reasons: EU biggest eastern borders are between Poland and Ukraine/Belarus, plus I think our mentality is a bit more Western than Eastern.

I say The Orient.

Why not? Nearly everywhere else has had a look in...

Russia is not Europe, get over the fact you are in Eastern Europe.

Russia is a Eurasian country, thus partly in Europe.

According to what criteria?

Medis wrote:


yeah, i guess because the "center" of all the EU's money went there.

adnar wrote:


man, i completely disagree with that.

the majority of Poland's population right now grew up during communist times, and everyone over the age of about 44 has spent more years in communism than in a democratic society. how can you compare a country full of people like that to people in western europe?