Midpoints of Nowhere – Shadow World: From Bohemia to Kremnicke Bane (Searching For The Center of Europe #3)

Remember the Grand Tour? It was a rite of passage from the 17^th – 19^th century for many aristocrats and wealthy travelers. Valuable experience would be acquired by those lucky enough to have the means to make a circuit around Europe and see the most famous cities and sites. The Grand Tour was considered an integral part of a liberal education. It went into decline when tourism began to gravitate toward the middle class and went mass market with package deals catering to a wider swath of travelers. Today, the Grand Tour hardly exists in its original form, though there are some parallels with aspects of modern tourism. Making a tour of Europe is still done by many college students in their gap year or those with the time and money to spend several months riding the rails from one stop to another.

A modern Grand Tour of Europe would take in some of the following destinations: Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona, Rome, Vienna, the Rhineland, and Switzerland. I never went on a Grand Tour or thought of going on one. The closest I ever came to something approaching the concept was traveling between the famous trio of Central and Eastern European cities, Budapest, Prague, and Vienna, but I did not visit all three on the same trip for a good reason. A whirlwind tour is just that, a simple effort to see as much as possible in as little time as possible. That sounds like travel purgatory to me. Nevertheless. I have been thinking about another Grand Tour, one that would take a traveler into the very heart of Europe. 

In the Distance – View of Dylen (Tillenberg) (Credit: Lubor Ferenc)

Backwaters – A Different Kind of Grand Tour
Imagine a tour of Europe that started atop a mountain, Dylen, on the edge of western Bohemia. From there, the tour would travel eastwards to several obscure towns and villages including Kremnicke Bane Slovakia, Tallya Hungary, Dilove Ukraine, Suchowola Poland, Polotsk Belarus, Girija Lithuania and finally to Saaremaa Island off the coast of Estonia. While all these places are obscure, they have one thing in common, each has been designated at one time or another as the Center of Europe. Some of the claims are dubious, but all the sites have sort of marker and/or commemorative plaques. Such a tour might enlighten the previously unaware to how the proverbial “other half” lives in Europe. Those whose lives have little to do with citified Europe, high powered jobs, or political maneuverings. They are far removed from the glitz and glamor of national capitals. There is no evocative old town in like the one in Warsaw awaiting visitors, none of Budapest’s grandeur or Lviv’s fin de siècle elegance to greet travelers.

The Centers of Europe are towns that belong to another world, one where the horse drawn wagon cart can be a familiar sight and the population still struggles to make ends meet on meager pensions or whatever work is available. People still rely on garden plots for meals and imbibe copious amounts of spirits not just at parties, but as a way of life. Bicycles are the main mode of public transport and people watching is a spectator sport for pensioners whether from the curbside or windows. A world where digital devices are few and the age of technology does not yet control life. This shadow world is not just the forgotten or unknown Europe, it is the Center of Europe and the middle of nowhere. Let us now armchair travel to a distant world, deep in the heart of Eastern Europe.

Middle marker – A Geographical Midpoint of Europe marker which was placed atop Dylen in 1862 (Credit: PeterBraun74)

Moving East – Behind & Beyond The Iron Curtain
Germany is the unofficial Center of Europe, if not geographically, then economically and politically. The starting point for this tour is only a hundred meters from the German border. This is the closest spot anyone searching for Europe’s midpoint can get to Germany. That is because Dylen (Tillenberg in German) is a mountain on the western edge of Bohemia. According to local lore, Napoleon Bonaparte declared that Dylen was the geographic center of Europe. Others piggybacked on this claim. It is probably not a coincidence that a team of Austrian geographers also claimed Dylen as the center of Europe since it was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time and on the edge of the German Empire in the late 19^th century. Later, Dylen was used for more insidious purposes as the Soviet Union set up an electronic listening station there during the Cold War. Today it is a lonely mountain top with lush vegetation and dark woods, a great place for hiking to the small stone marker place in 1862 at what had been declared as the geographical center of Europe. Dylen is a beautiful spot for sure, but also one of the most remote midpoints in Europe.

The center of Europe has shifted eastward multiple times and so does this journey. Eastern Europe as it is still known by many today – east of the old Iron Curtain – is from a geographical standpoint, central Europe. The marker at Dylen is the furthest western spot of any designated midpoint in Europe. A nation that has since vanished, Czechoslovakia, not only included Dylen, but also Kremince Bane, which is now located in Slovakia. The town is deep in the mountains of central Slovakia in an area blessed by nature. It was the surrounding hills and mountains which brought the larger town of Kremnice, just to the south of Kremnice Bane, a great deal of wealth. The area was mined for gold and other valuable minerals over the course of many centuries. The mines eventually played out and Kremnice became a backwater, while Kremnice Bane never even approached that level. Kremnice’s historic past and the area’s natural beauty have become a magnet for tourism.

Centerpoint – St. John’s Church with Geographical Midpoint of Europe marker in Kremnicke Bane (Credit: Fefeha)

Unscientific & Scenic – The Path to Kremnicke Bane
There is another tourist attraction just a bit beyond Kremnice which often gets overlooked. I know from experience since I spent several pleasant hours visiting the town a few years ago. Unfortunately, I failed to travel a couple of kilometers further north to Kremnicke Bane. On a paved road outside of the village stands the Geographical Midpoint of Europe monument, consisting of a large boulder with a couple of commemorative plaques attached. The granite boulder was set in 1815, when the spot was anointed the center of Europe. The claim may not have been scientific, but the site is certainly scenic. The monument offers a sort of two for one experience as it stands close to the Gothic inspired St. John’s Church. The location also offers a magnificent vista with rolling hills and mountains in the distance. It is an inspiring spot, perhaps the most evocative of all the places that claim to be the Center of Europe.

Click here for: The Center of Nowhere – Tallya, Sucholow, & Dilove (Searching For The Center of Europe #4)

A Village in Poland – Self-Centered (Searching For The Center of Europe #1)

In his poem, “The Second Coming” William Butler Yeats famously stated, “The centre cannot hold.” He was likely referring to the state of the world in 1919, the year he wrote the poem. At that time, Europe was just beginning to come to terms with the worst war in human history. The pre-World War I order had collapsed. The centre was no longer solid or sure, empires had sunk into an abyss from which they would never return. Nations had sustained grievous losses in men and material. Statesmen and citizens searched in vain to find a foundation on which to rebuild.

“The Centre cannot hold” was an appropriate epitaph because it no longer existed. Europe was gravitating to the extremes. One subject Yeats was not referring to in the poem, but to which his words might be prophetically applied, was the seemingly endless search for the Geographic Center of Europe. In that regard, “The centre cannot hold” is appropriate because it keeps moving and has done so for several centuries. Finding the geographic center of Europe is not nearly as easy as one might imagine. As a matter of fact, it is so difficult that seven different countries claim ownership of the location.

The First Claim – Monument marking Suchowola as the Geographical Midpoint of Europe in 1775 (Credit: Krzysztof Kundzicz)

The Greatest Extent – Going To Extremes
Anyone debating the location of Europe’s geographical midpoint must first come to terms with some parameters. This is a difficult problem that has been prone to a variety of interpretations. Every point of the compass, north, south, east, and west needs to be defined at its extremity. That leads to a couple of simple and yet surprisingly difficult questions. Where does Europe start? Where does Europe end? For instance, does western Europe begin on the coast of Portugal or at the northwestern tip of Iceland? It gets even more complicated when searching for Europe’s eastern extremity. For most of us, Eastern Europe is still defined by the nations which were located behind the Iron Curtain and perhaps the former Yugoslavia. One of those nations, the Soviet Union, consisted of constituent parts which became tiny nations on the fringes of Europe after 1991. The core nation of the Soviet Union was Russia, a large portion of which can be found in Asia rather than Europe. Thus, it follows that there must be a dividing line between Europe and Asia somewhere in Russia.

Defining the dividing line between Europe and Asia can be tricky. In the popular imagination, European Russia most commonly extends no further than Moscow. In scientific terms, it extends to the Ural Mountain chain 1800 kilometers to the east of the Russian capital. I doubt anyone gives much thought to the fact that Yekaterinburg is the easternmost city in Europe. If they even know where it is located. All this is to say that the center of Europe is located not where anyone might imagine. Surprisingly, Russia can also provide Europe with its southernmost point (depending on the parameters). For those who think some island in the Mediterranean or Aegean Sea might be the southernmost point in Europe, think again. Several geographers have identified it as the highest peak in the Caucasus Mountains on Russia’s southern frontier. All this goes to show, that when it comes to the geographical boundaries of Europe, going to extremes can lead to some strange places.

Unscientific Discovery – Boulder marking the Geographical Midpoint of Europe close to Kremnica in Slovakia (Credit: Doko)

Finding Suchowola  – Monuments Mark The Spots
As for locating the exact midpoint of Europe, well it depends on who is doing the locating. In Belarus, a team of Belarussians has located it in their country. The Soviet Union verified it was in the Ukraine, which of course was in the Soviet Union. A Swede placed it in Sweden. An Estonian on an Estonian island. These are great examples of nationalist bias trumping what should be a non-partial, scientific undertaking. The only thing certain about Europe’s midpoint is that it upends popular notions of many European nation’s geographical situation. Eastern Europe is Central Europe, while geographical Eastern Europe happens to be mostly located in Russia. How else to explain that Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine, all play host to the midpoint. At least that is what they want everyone to believe. Having the midpoint puts the claimant country at the center of Europe.

Attempts to identify the midpoint of Europe have a long history that goes all the way back to the enlightenment. The first “scientific” attempt to find the midpoint took place in 1775. A Polish astronomer and mapmaker, Szymon Antoni Sobiekrajski, made calculations based upon finding the midpoint between the most extreme northern, southern, eastern, and western points in Europe. This led Sobiekrajski to pace the midpoint in Suchowola, a town in eastern Poland. It is ironic that only three years before Sobiekrajski came to his conclusion, the First Partition of Poland occurred. Then, twenty years after Suchowola was first touted as Europe’s midpoint, Poland underwent its third and final partition. This effectively caused it to vanish from the map. On the other hand, Suchowola did not disappear from any maps nor did a monument that was placed there. The midpoint monument at Suchowola began a long history of memorializing an exact spot when it was declared as the center of Europe.

The Midpoint Moves East – Monument to the Geographical Midpoint of Europe in Dilove Ukraine (Credit: Сергій Венцеславський)

Unscientific Discoveries – Searching For Middle Ground
One of the more obscure declarations of Europe’s midpoint occurred in 1815 when it was placed at Kremnicke Bane, close to the gold mining town of Kremnica, which is now located in Slovakia. How this was exactly calculated is not clear, though it likely had something to do with Kremncike Bane’s location in an area that divides the Baltic and Black Seas watersheds. This designation received a commemorative stone marker. Placing the marker was a way to make the designation seem official. The nearby village of Krahule likes the designation for its tourist potential. It claims the title “Center of Europe” though it is far from alone in that regard.

When the site close to Kremnicke Bane was declared the “center of Europe” it was part of the Austrian Empire, which later morphed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Austrians were not finished either. Confusingly, they marked a spot on Tillenberg (Dylen in Czech), a mountain in extreme western. Bohemia as the Center of Europe as well.  They also declared a spot close to the village of Dilove, in what is now the Subcarpathian Region of Ukraine, as Europe’s geographic center in 1887. It was marked by a small monument which strangely enough was renewed in the late 1940’s by the Soviet Union. Austria-Hungary and the Soviet Union had next to nothing in common, but it seems that the Soviets were eager to promote an imperial claim if it suited their own needs. This claim, along with the earlier ones, was the beginning of a fight that would expand once again in the 20^th century. These would prove that the “centre cannot hold”. 

Click here for: A Field In Lithuania – Midpoints of Contention (Searching For The Center of Europe #2)

A Sense of Immediacy – Ukraine & Romania Reconnected By Rail (The Russian Invasion of Ukraine #291)

Beauty is few and far between these days in Ukraine. Tragically, the war tends to divert focus from the incredible acts of teamwork and unity that Ukrainians have shown during the last eleven months. Countless stories of the good and great are subverted to the endless series of tragedies small and large that occur each day with terrifying regularity. It is difficult to imagine what could possibly be good in a land where the inhabitants are going through long periods without electricity or water. With sub-zero temperatures in the dead of winter, Ukrainians are bundling themselves up against the cold and figuring out work arounds to find a bit of comfort amid the many miseries of war. Life goes on as it must. Ukrainians still go to work, commute to and from their homes, conduct their daily business with one eye on the sky, and their ears attuned to the scream of air raid sirens. Nevertheless, they continue to live and love while fighting to defeat Russian aggression. Every act of daily life, of normalcy is a small but essential victory in a war effort that demands self-control, suspension of disbelief, and incredible amounts of resolve.

The first train – Connecting Ukraine & Romania by rail (Credit: Alexander Kamyshin)

Reconnecting With Romania – A Thing of Beauty
Essential to making daily life a bit more bearable in a nation beset by war are the critical public services that allow Ukrainians to keep moving forward. These include metros and marshrutkas, open roads and railways running on time. The latter has been one of the greatest success stories of the war. Ukrainian Railways have continued to provide essential services despite, or perhaps because of the war. Their efforts at moving Ukrainians safely around the country deserve the highest commendation. One of the best ways to learn about their success is to follow the Twitter account of Alexander Kamyshin, the CEO of Ukrainian Railways. Kamyshin provides constant updates on the work that is being done to allow Ukrainians the freedom of movement. His tweets are a thing of beauty. They remind the reader that the war has not stopped Ukrainians from making sure a job is well done. To this end, Kamyshin relays some astonishing information. Take for instance, a tweet he made on Saturday, January 14^th, stating that 95% of trains departed on time and 96% arrived on time. It is hard to imagine any national railway company exceeding those numbers in a time of peace, let alone amid the largest war fought in Europe since 1945.

A few days ago, Kamyshin provided more good news in a series of tweets on the opening of a cross border railway line between Ukraine and Romania for the first time in 17 years. To complete the project on their side of the border, Ukrainian railway workers reconstructed 20 kilometers of track during the summer. The Romanians reciprocated by later finishing the section of railway on their territory. Prior to the war, this project had suffered from numerous delays. Ironically, the war has given new impetus to achieving efficiencies in public transport. The endless delays that befell such infrastructure projects prior to the war have vanished. A can-do spirit has taken hold. The war has brought few good things to Ukraine, but a sense of immediacy is one of them. “The future is now” should be the motto for Ukrainian railways.

Master of the rails – Alexander Kamyshin

Within Reach – A Single Railway Journey
The completed line connects Rakiv-Berlebash-Dilove in southwestern Ukraine with Valea Visului in northern Romania. From the latter, trains may head deep into Transylvania or further south to the Romanian capital of Bucharest. This connection between the two countries is particularly important because Romania is a member of both the European Union and NATO. Military supplies can now flow northward by rail. They will be entering Ukraine through an area that has been virtually untouched by Russian attacks. The rugged Carpathian Mountains – 60% of the range is in Ukraine – acts as a natural barrier making this part of Ukraine difficult to attack. With few population centers to target and its far-flung location, the region is an afterthought for Russian military strategists.

As Kamyshin made clear in his tweets, the completed project is more than just an avenue of transport for military supplies. It will also provide a connection for the 30,000 Ukrainians who are citizens of Romania that want to visit their family, friends, and ethnic kin back in the motherland. There are also the 86,000 Ukrainian refugees living in Romania who are waiting out the war. Whenever it is finally safe to return home, many of them will do so by using this new rail route. The most important effect of the rail line will be its benefits to the Ukrainian and Romanian economies.

The line is a major boost to the export of Ukrainian agricultural commodities which are still hampered by the Russian Black Sea Fleet blockade of Ukraine’s coastline. While trains cannot match ships for quantity of grain exports, any additional capacity will help support Ukraine’s economy. In that regard, tourism will also increase as more Romanians can begin traveling into one of the wildest and most affordable vacation destinations in Europe. The Carpathians are usually seen as exclusive to Transylvania, but the least visited part of the range can be found in Ukraine waiting to be discovered. Now the region is easily within reach on a single railway journey.

Marking the spot – Geographical Center of Europe near Dilove (Credit: Sergey Ventseslavsky)

Centerpiece – The Heart of Europe
One thing Kamyshin’s tweets did not mention is a monument located close to Dilove, a Ukrainian village the new rail connection passes through. Close to Dilove is a unique monument placed there by Austro-Hungarian authorities in 1887. This marks the spot imperial geographers claimed as the geographical center of Europe. While many other places have made similar claims, this was among the first. That notoriety was soon lost as the winds of war swept through the area multiple times, obliterating the empire and leading to the monument being hidden behind an iron curtain. That curtain was torn down between 1989 and 1991, this led to the birth of independent Ukraine. For many, that was the moment Ukraine rejoined Europe, but the truth was that it had never left. The heart of Europe was always there. It still is, now more so than ever.    

Click here for: Teutonic Shifts – The German Question & War In Ukraine #1 (The Russian Invasion of Ukraine #292)

Unrealized Potentials – Traveling the Tisza River

Thousands of tourists cruise the waters of the Danube River each summer. Along the way they have the opportunity to pass through four European Capitals, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade. They might also float by such historic cities as Ulm, Regensburg and Linz among many others.  Those traveling further down the Danube to Belgrade might fail to notice one of its most important tributaries across from the non-descript Serbian village of Novi Slakamene. It is here that another important European river has its mouth. This river is the largest left bank tributary of the Danube, though rarely given much thought or recognition. It is called the Tisza. Unlike the Danube’s most famous stretches that flow through the heart of Central Europe, the Tisza is both naturally and culturally an Eastern European river from its headwaters high in the Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine to its meandering course across the Great Hungarian Plain all the way down to its mouth in northern Serbia. The Tisza has a rich, distinct history almost entirely unknown. Though it lacks the cultural cachet and name recognition of the Danube, the Tisza has its own delights, offering adventure and discovery of the unknown.

Map of the Tisza River and the southern part of the Danube

Taming the Tisza – Placing Nature In A Straitjacket
Like all major rivers in Europe, the Tisza as it exists today is very different from its original form. The most dramatic changes to the river have occurred over the last two hundred years. The forces of industrialization, technological change and modernization all in the name of economic development reshaped the river. In the process, the Tisza’s flow was transformed from a serpentine course to a relatively straight and much more navigable waterway. Staring at the languid waters of the Tisza today, one gets the sense that the river is rather benign. This is deceiving. Not that long ago the Tisza was a wild, dangerous river that periodically inundated the surrounding landscape, tormenting villagers who relied on its waters for their livelihood. The project to tame the river took decades. It was massive, especially by the standards of the 19^th century. When it began in 1846, the river stretched 1,419 kilometers (880 miles), equivalent to the distance from Amsterdam to Budapest.

By the time “regulation of the Tisza” was complete, the river had been considerably shortened. 453 kilometers (280 miles) of bends and ox bows had been cut off. Ships and barges were now able to travel further up the Tisza into the heartland of the Kingdom of Hungary.  This expedited commerce, especially the transport of grain. The areas through which the Tisza flowed became a breadbasket for the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  In the late 19^th century, the river had taken on its present form. With the Tisza’s development, cities along its shores also grew, but never to the extent that those along the Danube did. Cities such as Szeged and Szolnok blossomed, but never grew in size anywhere close to the extent of Budapest or Belgrade. The Tisza had become what it still pretty much is today, an important, albeit economic backwater. In essence, a vital artery for the region it drained and flowed through, but of no greater significance outside of its adjacent region.

The Tisza at Szeged, Hungary – the largest city on the river (Credit: Zsolt Varadi)

Tourism & the Tisza – A Confluence Of Pleasures
The same could be said of the Tisza’s present day tourism potential. If one is looking to get away from the crowds on and along the Danube, then following the Tisza can certainly result in a unique experience. Those traveling on the river are most likely to start in Tokaj, Hungary, the center of a UNESCO World Heritage Wine Region Cultural Landscape. They then cruise down to Szeged, famed for its beautiful turn of the 20^th century architecture that stemmed from a massive effort to rebuild the city in the wake of catastrophic flooding from the Tisza in 1879.  Further down, the river meets the mighty Danube at Novi Slankamen in the Vojvodina region of Serbia. That is as far as most travelers are likely to venture along the Tisza, they have little idea that the most interesting areas are much further upstream.

The adventurous need to seek out the Tisza’s wilder upper reaches. The provincial hub of Rakhiv, Ukraine is the top destination for this area. Almost totally unknown even today, Rakhiv has only become accessible since the fall of the Iron Curtain. The Tisza proper begins here as the waters of the White and Black Tisza, streams that flow down from the highest reaches of the Ukrainian Carpathians unite at Rakhiv. This is a much different version of the Tisza than the more familiar one in Hungary.  The river’s current is swift and sure as it runs through a valley that it helped carve over many millennia. This is not the place for genteel cruising. Instead it is a playground for recreational paddlers with the river running swift and sure, the nature wild and untamed.

The Upper Tisza at Rakhiv, Ukraine (Credit: Ivan Bil)

Eastern Approaches – Against The Shores of Progress
Incidentally for all the remoteness of its upper reaches, the Tisza flows within a few feet of what was once deemed the geographical center of Europe. Just 15 kilometers from Rakhiv is the small village of Dilove. This was where the center of Europe was located by a team of Austro-Hungarian geographers in 1887. Today this designation is open to much debate, but it is striking that all of Dilove’s competition can be found in Eastern Europe as well. Who would have thought that the obscure upper reaches of the Tisza would run right through what many consider the geographical center of Europe? Most fascinating of all, for both paddlers and travelers, is the fact that the upper Tisza straddles the Ukraine – Romania border. On one side stands a society still trying to escape from the legacy of Soviet influence, on the other a member of the European Union. This is one of three stretches along the Tisza where this occurs. The others are the Ukraine – Hungary and Hungary-Serbia border. The Tisza as it stands today is not just a river, but also a border, where the old Eastern Europe washes up against the shores of the new.

Unknown, Forgotten & Beautiful – The Center of Europe (Dilove, A Small Village in the Ukraine)

In 1887 geographers from the Austro-Hungarian Empire erected a pillar at the small village of Dilove, close to the city of Rakhiv in the Carpathian region of southwestern Ukraine. It contained a Latin inscription, in addition to the latitude and longitude of the marker’s spot. Over a century later, the newly formed nation of Ukraine declared that the pillar stood at the geographical center of Europe. Since that proclamation, critics have questioned this claim. They say that the inscription on the pillar was mistranslated and that the pillar was not erected to mark the center of Europe, instead it was a fixed triangulation point, one of several used for surveying purposes. (See note at end of this article for a translation of the inscription) The critics might have a valid point, but why steal this otherwise unknown spot’s claim to fame.

The Center of Europe? This monument might mark the spot at the village of Dilove, Ukraine – Courtesy “© Raimond Spekking / CC-BY-SA-3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)”

Eastward to the Center
If Dilove is not the center of Europe then where exactly is it? The easy answer is that there is no clear answer. The list of candidates is less than notable. Such bizarrely named villages as Babruysk, Purnuskes, Suchowola and Kremnicke Bane are not anymore well known than, Dilove. Finding the center of Europe is highly dependent on how the midpoint is measured. For instance, it can shift dramatically depending on whether or not islands are taken into account. Sometimes it even ends up on an island, such as Saaremaa which is part of Estonia. Hungary, well known for its cleverness, makes its claim not on the basis of geography, but instead geometry. The geometric center of Europe happens to be in the village of Tallya in the northeastern part of that country. For this achievement it received the obligatory monument. Such honors elicit a collective shrug of indifference from all but the most eccentric geographers.

Unknown, Forgotten & Beautiful – Ukrainian Carpathians at the center of Europe

On the other hand, would it be any more interesting if the geographical center of Europe was in Vienna or Prague. In such a case it would almost be certainly forgotten. These places are actually known for something, they have made history. They are not trying to make it up. And besides any respectable European knows that the center of Europe is in Berlin, specifically in the Chancellery, where ever Angela Merkel happens to be standing. At least that’s what everyone suspects and every good German secretly acknowledges.

Centrifugal Forces
All joking aside, we are probably better off with the villages already nominated (or self-nominated). Intriguingly all the different places posited as the center lie within Eastern Europe. This has much to do with the size and scale of western Russia which dwarfs even the largest European nations. It pulls the midpoint eastward until it comes to a halt in at least four different countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. Thus, should the geographic center of Europe be:

1) Babruysk or Vitebsk or  Polotsk or near Lake Sho, Belarus – with four candidates Belarus is really trying to muscle their way to the crown. This befits Europe’s last dictatorship (though Russia is working hard to become number two). If a nation cannot even decide on which center should be the center than something is really backward. That sounds like Belarus for sure.

2) Purnuskes or Bernotai, Lithuania – well both are close to Vilnius which is a wonderfully cosmopolitan city, sophisticated and filled with cultural attractions. I doubt the same can be said for these two villages.

3) Suchowola, Poland – its claim goes all the way back to a late 18^th century astronomer. Plus, it has rose from the ashes. The town’s population was nearly obliterated in World War II, lost its town status, but won it back just before the turn of the 21^st century.

4) Kremnicke Bane or Krahule, Slovakia – neighboring villages. They represent Central Europe’s conflicted 20^th century history. Settled by Germans all the way back in the mid-14^th century, their nearly six hundred year presence came to an end following World War II. Almost of all whom fled or were removed due to the Benes Decrees, which called for the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia. This is a striking example of Germany moving west in the post-war period, both in a literal and figurative sense.

5) Tallya, Hungary – geometry is not quite geography, but who cares. Their sculpture even comes with a table on it that states, “Geometric Center of Europe” in case there was ever any question.

6) Saaremaa Island, Estonia – Way, way out there, but we have to take its candidacy seriously since it survived being hit by huge pieces of a meteorite several thousand years ago. One of the explosions set off by the impact has been estimated as equal to the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

7) Dilove, Ukraine – back to where we started. Dilove is on the edge of both the EU and the Ukraine. It is only a short hop from the monument across the banks of the Tysz River into Romania and EU territory. It is in a province which borders on four countries: Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. In the last hundred years it has been part of Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Soviet Union and  Ukraine. It’s a stone’s throw from the EU, yet it has little chance of being part of that project. An insider and outsider, perpetually stuck in the middle. Unknown, forgotten, remote. This is the center of Europe, stuck between East and West.

Note: Regarding the inscription on the Center of Europe pillar, the Rakhiv website states that “According to the translation by the academician M.Tarasov the following words is carved: “Constant, Exact, Eternal place. Very exactly, with a special apparatus which is made in Austria and Hungary with a scale of meridians and parallels the Centre of Europe is fixed here 1887.”