Country Guides
Select the country below to learn the history, geography, and more about the destinations
you’ll visit during your trip.
COUNTRY GUIDE
Though Austria is smaller than the state of Maine, it has played an outsized role in Europe’s political, cultural, and musical spheres. Its leaders have shaped empires. Elegant cityscapes have ...
COUNTRY GUIDE
The second-most densely populated country in Europe, Belgium has lured settlers—and would-be conquerors—from the rest of the continent for 2,000 years. Romans, Huns, Dukes of Burgundy, ...
COUNTRY GUIDE
For over 1,300 years, a Bulgarian state has occupied territory north of the Black Sea. For the last twelve centuries, Orthodox Christianity has been the dominant religion, beginning in the 800’ ...
COUNTRY GUIDE
Like a long ribbon of beauty, narrow Croatia cuts a swath not only through the European coast, but through history. First recorded as part of Roman Illyria – the dreamy realm immortalized by ...
COUNTRY GUIDE
From the ninth century onward, the region where the Czech Republic today lies was known as the Lands of the Crown of Bohemia. At times a fiefdom of the Holy Roman Empire and then increasingly ...
COUNTRY GUIDE
Romans, Huns, Bulgarians—everyone desired the fertile land that would one day become Hungary. Inhabited as early as 9 B.C., the Carpathian Basin changed hands from empire to empire until the ...
COUNTRY GUIDE
Romania is Europe’s Garden of Eden: 42,000 year-old bones found in Carpathian caves are the first evidence of early modern humans on the continent. But there was no written record of the people ...
COUNTRY GUIDE
During the age of the Roman Empire, the region that is now Serbia was a key player, its territory extending into six Roman provinces, and the Serbian city of Sirmium serving as a capital of the ...
COUNTRY GUIDE
Though the findings of prehistoric stone tools and a Neanderthal skull suggest that what is now Slovakia has been occupied for hundreds of thousands of years, the Slavs who gave the land its current ...
COUNTRY GUIDE
Despite boasting a rich culture that includes figures like Goethe, Gutenberg, and Bach, Germany did not even exist until the 19th century. Instead, the German-speaking people lived on land divided ...
