The Earth’s landmasses have some very interesting
shapes, like how the west coast of South America is on more or less the same latitude as the
east coast of North America, or how Maine is the closest US state to Africa. However,
once you get humans involved to draw their little borders and build their cities, things
can get even weirder. No surprise, weird geographical phenomena are things I find incredibly fascinating,
so if you’ll forgive me I’m basically just going to spend this whole video nerding
out about weird geography facts (but hopefully some that you probably haven’t heard before)
like how Germany is technically only two countries away from the US. So you’re probably asking yourself, how?
What do I even mean when I say Germany is two countries apart from the US? Is it some
super technical thing where I actually mean France and Spain, once you exclude the Atlantic
Ocean? No, what I mean is that Germany borders a country that borders another country that
borders the US. Okay, but… how?! Well let’s start in Germany, first you’re going to
want to go east (actually you’re going to want to go east the whole way, this should
be a little hint), so first we reach Poland, which obviously borders Germany. As if they
hadn’t had enough of their bad neighbors, Poland also borders Russia, which is obviously
crucial to this. Now Poland doesn’t border Russia proper, but it does border the exclave
of Kaliningrad (which I’m sure the comments will be quick to point out was once the German
city of Königsberg) and still counts. Now Russia’s going to help us because it is…
is it too late to say “heckin’ chonker”? Yeah probably, I’ve already made that joke
a couple times, but nonetheless Russia is massive, so going east we eventually reach
the northeasternmost point in Asia, or actually a little bit further to the Diomede islands.
You’ve probably heard of these guys, they’re a pair of islands, one of which belongs to
Russia and the other to the US, and right between the two runs a maritime border with
Alaska, putting two countries directly between the US and Germany.
What’s crazy about this is that when I said there are only two countries between Germany
and the US, I didn’t necessarily have to use Poland and Russia, there are actually
two more pairs I could use, as pointed out by Geography World on Twitter. So what other
countries does Germany border? Well let’s see, Czechia, Austria, Switzerland… France…
France is somewhat famously not confined to its territories in mainland Europe and Corsica,
but also has far-flung territories scattered all over the place, most of which also fully
count as France. If you want to learn more about these I made a video on these territories
a few months ago, but what you need know here is the existence of St. Pierre and Miquelon,
a pair of islands located right off the coast of Newfoundland, complete with a maritime
border with the island (and yeah we’re going to count maritime borders for the sake of
explanation), and now that you’re in Canada, yeah I’m pretty sure Canada borders the
US no problem. Finally we have, Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, and Denmark… if by
Denmark we mean the Kingdom of Denmark, complete with the territory of Greenland, and what’s
that up there? Oh you bet that’s another maritime border, with Canada! Okay maybe not
a true maritime border, but it does have border disputes! Need I say more? So Germany is two
countries away from the US, in three different ways, not exactly a realization that comes
intuitively, but one that shows both how big Russia is and how many territories countries
like France have all around the world. Going back to Germany, a good amount of playing
with the measure tool on Google Maps reveals that Cologne is just as far from Berlin as
it is from London. Going southward, Munich is also closer to Bosnia and Herzegovina than
it is to Berlin. That however is nothing compared to a city like Freiburg im Breisgau, which
really shows how kind of weirdly located Berlin is for a capital, since it is actually closer
to Paris, Brussels, Luxembourg City, Amsterdam, Bern, Ljubljana, Monaco, Liechtenstein, San
Marino, and even Prague than it is to Berlin, seven foreign capitals (ten if you count the
tiny microstates). These facts might make you feel like you’re this close to losing
it, but Moldova is already about that close to not being landlocked. Seriously, the town
of Palanca, located about 45 kilometers west of Odessa, is less than 3 kilometers from
the Dniester Estuary on the Black Sea, but that 3km of land still belongs to Ukraine,
so… sorry, Moldova. Of course the countries of Europe themselves
are pretty small-- even the largest non-Russia country in Europe (Ukraine) is still smaller
than the largest US state (Alaska)-- but one country that is ginormous is China. China
has always seemed far from Europe (and to be fair it is), but if you look at the westernmost
point in the country, just west of Kashgar, you’ll find that it is actually closer to
Istanbul than Shanghai. In fact, it is also closer to Belarus than to Beijing. Let’s
close this video with a few fun facts about linguistic geography, like what the closest
English-speaking country to Italy is. I‘ll give you a hint, it‘s a left-side driving
island nation. That’s right, it’s Malta (and, well, to be fair they were a British
colony at one point, so that would explain that).
Finally, what is the largest English-speaking city in the world? By that I mean what is
the most populous city in an English-speaking country? It’s not New York, it’s not London,
it’s not even in what’s generally considered the Anglosphere, it’s New Delhi, India,
home to about the same number of people as live in New York and London… combined. Okay,
now what is the largest Francophone city in the world? Judging from the last answer of
course, I’d imagine you’re waiting for me to not say Paris, and you’re right it’s
not Paris, it’s Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (or Dr. Congo, as I
prefer), beating out Paris by 3 million people. Lastly, what is the largest German-speaking
city in the world? A bit of a tough one, isn’t it? Yeah it’s actually Berlin, the world
isn’t *that* weird. As always thanks for watching, and please
let me know if you want more of these kinds of videos. If you want to peer in on discussions
about future videos, memes, and other random stuff, be sure to join the Discord server,
and like, share, and subscribe to learn something new every Sunday.
