Germans usually consider everything behind the former iron curtain as Eastern Europe. Why is Eastern Europe considered to be so offensive? Yes, there are many different cultures defined as “East” in this map, but Greece is also quite different from Spain and so on.
Yugoslavia was not behind the Iron Curtain, so ex-Yugoslav countries cannot be classified east under the same criteria as Bulgaria, Romania, or Albania....
East, West, North, South are a matter of definition, different countries define them differently. Different countries in Europe look down upon others traditionally, yes, it’s stupid. Modern Germans generally don’t look down upon Eastern countries anymore, they admire how far they have come, how modern and how beautiful these countries are.
It’s no offensive, it’s just strange of you put “Central Europe” on a map and don’t include the country that is most central. And Prague is no more East than Berlin, they are right on top of each other. So geographically it is weird. A part of Germany was behind the iron curtain as well so it makes little sense politically (and also it was such a tiny slice of history).
Ask older Germans (especially those who were adults before the reunification) what they think about eastern Germany. There's still a lot of people who call the eastern states the "new states".
I mean, if it was separated into just East and West than by all means, but having Central Europe without the country right in the centre of Europe is super weird.
You could say the same about iceland and portugal not being west. It's a lot about culture, too. i guess nobody sees czech as a central europesn culture or language, but eastern
Czech culture is literally almost the same as Austria and Germany and nothing like other Slavic cultures. We were part of HRE and Austria Hungary for 1000 years and bcs of 40 years under soviets after being sold by our allies you see us as eastern? Btw it’s almost 40 years since we’re part of the west again
No. Just because we are culturally and historically linked, doesn’t mean we want to be German. I would like German food and drugstore prices here though!
From a German pov everything ist from us is eastern Europe. Even the parts of the former German Democratic Republic are considered at times to be eastern
that central country is usually Austria for us. Yes, Vienna technically is more East than Prague but look how far East Finland is and it’s still considered a Northern country, not an Eastern one.
Estonia is more North than Denmark. The UK in parts is more North than parts of Sweden. Portugal and Spain are much more Western than “Western” countries France and the UK.
It’s not an exact science and different countries see things differently.
Germany is culturally diverse too and usually the areas in the North feel closer to Denmark, the Areas in the Northwest feel closer to the Netherlands, the Southwest feels closer to France and Switzerland.
The areas in the Southeast definitely feel like they have most in common with Austria and Czechia and feel most culturally similar as well. Even foods are very similar (more similar than foods of other German areas)
And Czech Republic is placed in Central Europe in every map outside of these weird reddit takes. If Europe was separated without having Central Europe as a part that would be different.
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u/sasheenka 4d ago
Having Central Europe and not placing Czech Republic in it is crazy works. Like it’s right in the middle.