Slovakia (Slovensko) is a small country in Central Europe. The country is slightly larger than the Netherlands and has 5.4 million inhabitants. The capital is Bratislava.

Geography

According to ABBREVIATIONFINDER, Slovakia is a landlocked country, it is not located by the sea. The country borders Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic. Slovakia is an elongated country, it measures a maximum of 410 kilometers from west to east and 190 kilometers from north to south. Slovakia is the most mountainous country in Central Europe, with the Vysoké Tatry (High Tatras) and Nízke Tatry (Low Tatras), the Beskydy (Beskids) and the Biele Karpaty (White Carpathians). Gerlachovský štít is the highest mountain at 2,654 meters. The main river is the Dunaj (Danube) which forms part of the border with Hungary but in the Bratislava regionflows through the interior of Slovakia. The Váh is the longest river entirely in Slovakia. The Hron is the second longest river.

Slovakia has a moderate continental climate with warm summers and cold winters. Temperatures vary greatly according to altitude. In low-lying Bratislava, the average maximum temperature in summer is 28°C and the average minimum temperature in winter is -3°C. Due to the continental climate and the differences in altitude, outliers between -40°C and 40°C also occur. Bratislava averages 560 mm of precipitation per year.

Economy

Slovakia is a high income country. The average income in Slovakia in 2021 was €1,211 per month, but varies greatly by sector, in the IT and financial world the average income is around €2,100 per month. In addition, income varies greatly by region, especially the capital Bratislava. In Slovakia people pay with the euro.

The Slovak economy is dominated by services, more than two thirds of Slovaks work in the service sector. Tourism is on the rise, especially in the Tatras and Bratislava. The industrial sector is less dominant than during the communist period. However, many cars are produced in Slovakia. Several car brands have factories in Slovakia.

Demographics

More than 80% of the inhabitants are Slovak, the largest minority are Hungarians (9%), who mainly live in the south. See Slovakia population density. A relatively large number of Roma live in Slovakia, often in poor living conditions. The Luník X district of Košice is one of the most deprived areas in the European Union. Slovak is spoken in Slovakia, which is closely related to Czech. Hungarian and Rusyn are the main minority languages ​​and are spoken in the south and northeast respectively.

Bratislava is the largest city in Slovakia, followed by the eastern city of Košice. There are no other cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, but there are 13 cities with more than 40,000 inhabitants. Regional centers are Prešov, Žilina, Banská Bystrica, Nitra and Trnava. Most of the larger towns are located along the valley of the river Váh in western Slovakia. However, there are no important places on the Dunaj (Danube) outside the capital Bratislava.

History

Slovakia used to belong to Austria-Hungary and after the First World War in 1918 together with the Czech Republic became independent and formed the country Czechoslovakia. In 1938, the Czech Republic was partly annexed by Germany, after which Hungary occupied southern and eastern Slovakia. In 1939 the whole of the Czech Republic was occupied by Germany and Slovakia became an independent country. After World War II, from 1948 it became a communist country – Czechoslovakia, a satellite state of the Soviet Union. Slovakia lost the easternmost part to the Soviet Union, the region around Uzhorod. Before that, the country also bordered Romania. The communists invested heavily in Slovakian industry after 1950, because the area was more strategic than in western Czechoslovakia. Communism fell in 1989, after which the Czech Republic and Slovakia separated peacefully in 1993. In 2004 Slovakia became a member of NATO and the European Union. Since 2009 people have paid with the euro.