Czechia is a basin that gives its water away

Czechia has no coast, and that absence is the country's order. The Elbe, the Oder and the Morava leave the territory before they reach a sea. Prague stands on the Vltava, the Vltava joins the Elbe, and the Elbe continues into Germany. The state is a basin that gives its water away and keeps its politics inland.

In the TerraTally record the country covers 78,865 square kilometres and counts 10,886,878 people. The capital is Prague. The land neighbours are Germany, Poland, Austria and Slovakia. None of them is a sea. The borders run across uplands, stretches of river and the more open country of Moravia. Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia are the historic lands inside this basin. Together they make a state younger than the watersheds that organise it.

The water belongs to other seas

The Vltava crosses Prague and meets the Elbe. The Elbe leaves Bohemia for Germany and in the end reaches the North Sea. In the north-east the Oder exits the country and makes for the Baltic through Poland. In the south-east the Morava, the German March, carries water out of Moravia. It belongs to the Danube basin, and the Danube ends in the Black Sea. Czech territory touches none of these seas. It holds the upper courses and gives away the mouths.

A political geography without a harbour myth follows from that. Towns and industry grew on rivers that could carry goods and on passes that join neighbours. The road to the North Sea runs along the Elbe and across German territory. The road to the Baltic runs along the Oder. The road to the south-east runs along the Morava toward Bratislava and the Danube basin. Czechia depends on other countries' ports and plains. It has made of that dependence a landlocked state whose external ties can be read along the outlets.

What remained after the federation

Until Czechoslovakia was dissolved, this basin shared a state with Slovakia. Slovakia is now the eastern neighbour, divided off by a border that used to be internal. Bohemia, with Prague, was the western core, industrial and turned toward Germany. Moravia opens south, toward Austria. Czech Silesia lies in the north-east, toward Poland. The present state is the sum of these lands. The watershed outlasted the federation.

The short name Czechia stands beside the long form Czech Republic. International usage still clings to the long form; inside the country Česko is the short name. A state that came out of a federation needed a designation that names the republic and does not shrink the historic lands to the capital. The koruna and the official language do the same work of distinction toward Slovakia. There the euro circulates; here the koruna does. There Slovak is official; here Czech is.

Czechia is the basin that remained when the shared state ended. The rivers had already arranged the country.

— TerraTally · Countries desk

Prague, Czech and the koruna

Prague is the capital on the Vltava, in the interior of Bohemia. From here Germany is the western neighbour, reached across the Ore Mountains and the Elbe valley. Poland lies to the north, Austria to the south, Slovakia to the east. That neighbourhood explains the position better than any picture of a port state. Czechia sits in the middle of Central Europe and is tied to its neighbours by rivers, roads and membership of the European Union. The border is still a border the moment the currency changes.

The official language is Czech. Slovak belongs to the neighbouring state and to the former federation. It is often understandable in daily life and it is not the official language of this state's law. The Czech National Bank issues the currency: the Czech koruna. Germany, Austria and Slovakia use the euro. Poland does not. Anyone paying in Prague pays in korunas. The western border is therefore a language border, a state border and a currency border at once, even though the Elbe crosses it without a pause.

Czechia can be told as what was left of a federation. The basin is the more precise story. The water leaves to the north, the north-east and the south-east, and the state stays up on the divide, with Prague on a river that reaches the sea only across someone else's territory.