How to learn the countries of the Balkans

The coast, north to south

Down the Adriatic Sea, opposite Italy: Croatia, the boomerang that takes nearly all of the coast; Montenegro, a short stretch; Albania; and then Greece, the end of the peninsula and its islands.

The inland four

• Bosnia and Herzegovina sits inside the curve of Croatia, with only a few kilometres of coast.
• Serbia is the large one in the middle, with no coast.
• Kosovo is the small one below Serbia.
• North Macedonia is below Kosovo and Serbia, and above Greece.

And the east

Bulgaria is the ninth: east of Serbia and North Macedonia, on the Black Sea, with Greece below it. Two neighbours are often counted with the Balkans and are worth learning in the same sitting: Slovenia, at the top of the coast above Croatia, and Romania, above Bulgaria.

What gets mixed up

• Montenegro and North Macedonia. Montenegro is on the sea. North Macedonia is inland, further south-east.
• Kosovo and Montenegro. Neighbours, and both small. Montenegro has the coast.
• Albania and North Macedonia. Side by side; Albania is the one on the sea.
• Slovenia and Slovakia. Slovenia is the one here, next to Italy. Slovakia is further north, beside Czechia.

Practise it

Take one group at a time. Play it on Name it until the names come without thinking, then switch to Find it, which asks the harder question: given only the name, where is it? What you miss comes back sooner in Review, and what you know comes back less often, so a few minutes a day is enough.

• Countries of the Balkans: the nine, on their own.
• Countries that were part of Yugoslavia, which explains why so many of them are young.
• All of the continent: how to learn the countries of Europe.