General

The Land

Germany is located in Central Europe, covering an area of 356,959 square kilometres. It is bordered by the North Sea, Denmark and the Baltic Sea in the north, by the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France in the west, Poland and the Czech Republic in the east, and Austria and Switzerland in the south. It extends approx. 850 kilometres from its northern border to the Alps in the south and approx. 650 kilometres from the western to the eastern border. About one third of the land is covered by forests and woodlands and about 50% of the land is used for agricultural production.

Basically, Germany can be devided into several topographic regions:

• the flat North German Lowlands including the North Sea coast, the Wadden Sea, the Frisian Islands and the Baltic Sea coast;
• the mountainous Central German Uplands with their extensive forests, rifts and valleys;
• the Rhine River Valley area with its mild climate in the west;
• the beautiful Alpine Foreland in southern Germany with its rolling green hills and stunning glacial lakes;
• the German Alps in Bavaria with their peaks well above 2000 metres.