The Baltic region

Spotlight on the Baltic Region

The Baltic Sea region is a key developing region today. It includes some Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark) which are extremely prosperous and high tech and meanwhile the "Baltic States" Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are enthusiastically bouncing back since the end of communism at the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. See this video about Estonia's tech industry and Skype.

Estonia's hi-tech haven: from Skype to scooters
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26255966

If you look in the news right now, you will see the Baltic states on the front page: pundits are discussing whether Russia could conceivably launch an invasion into the Baltic States to try to bring them back under Russian influence. However, unlike Ukraine, the Baltics are part of NATO which means that any attack on them would be considered an attack on the US, so a Russian invasion there seems unlikely. Personally, I find the Baltic Sea region to be a very interesting place that I would like to visit because it is so dynamic, people are moving forward and are happy to be free and able to own their own businesses since communism and yet also have ancient traditions as well.

Take a long time to look over the maps in the book around the Baltic region. Maps include all kinds of lessons. If you notice, St. Petersburg, Russia (by far Russia's nicest city) is also on the Baltic, and it has a strong trade relationship with EU ports like Helsinki, Stockholm, and Gdansk. And read in the textbook about the role of Copenhagen as an entrepôt -- you cannot go in or out of the Baltic from the North Sea and Atlantic without going through tiny straits around Denmark, and this has made Copenhagen one of the world's busiest ports.

You can also find a Geographic oddity on the Baltic coast: Kaliningrad, a little chunk of Russia that is separated from the rest of the country. The term for this is an "exclave" (as opposed to an enclave).

Poland and Germany have major ports on the Baltic, and today Germany exports its high-tech goods to all the Baltic countries. Germany has the third largest export economy in the world, sending its products out literally in all directions over the oceans and its many rivers. Meanwhile, in the shipyards of Poland's largest port Gdansk (see map) the Solidarity Movement was formed in 1980, uniting 1/3 of Poland's workforce in the first free trade union in the Soviet Union, which was a step toward the fall of communism in 1991.

The Baltic Sea is actually an estuary i.e. where rivers meet ocean, and thus has brackish i.e. semi-salty water. Roughly 45% of the sea freezes over each winter.

In the Middle Ages, the Baltic was the location of a major European trade organization called the Hanseatic League.