Countries

peg · 47 = r-k = ROCK. A rock in the Pyrenees, and not much else.

peg · 29 = n-p = KNOB. A knob of mountain on the Adriatic.

peg · 84 = f-r = FIRE. Note this collides with Germany's *population* of 84 million — one fire, two very different quantities.

peg · 51 = l-d = LID, the small twin of Spain's 506,000. Bosnia is Spain's lid at a tenth the scale.

peg · 31 = MAT, the small twin of Poland's 313,000. Both flat, both crossed by everyone.

peg · 11 = t-d = TIDE. A tide between the Danube and the Black Sea.

peg · 21 = n-t = NET. A net of forest and marsh.

peg · 41 = r-t = RAT. A rat in the Alps, just under the Dutch rain.

peg · 93 = PUMA, the small twin of Hungary's 93,000. A puma on a copper island.

peg · 79 = k-p = CAP. A cap fitted over the Bohemian basin.

peg · 36 = m-ch = MATCH. A struck match — smaller than France, and that asymmetry drove a century of German anxiety.

peg · 43 = r-m = RAM. A ram butting into the base of Jutland.

peg · 45 = r-l = RAIL, the small twin of Sweden's 450,000. Same rail, one tenth the length, straight across the gulf.

peg · 51 = l-d = LID. A lid on the Iberian pot, just under France.

peg · 34 = m-r = MOWER. A mower going round a thousand lakes.

peg · 55 = l-l = LILY. The fleur-de-lis, half a million square kilometres of it.

peg · 24 = n-r = NERO. The UK and Romania are near-identical in size — one Nero, two empires' worth of self-image.

peg · 13 = t-m = DIME. A dime dropped into the Aegean and shattering into islands.

peg · 57 = l-k = LOCK. A lock closing round Bosnia.

peg · 93 = p-m = PUMA. A puma crossing the Carpathian basin.

peg · 70 = k-s = GOOSE. A goose on green grass.

peg · 10 = t-s = TOES. Ten toes on cold rock. The surprise here is that Iceland is *big*.

peg · 30 = m-s = MOUSE. A mouse in the boot, just under Poland.

peg · 16 = d-sh = DISH. A dish in the Rhine valley.

peg · 65 = ch-l = JAIL. Lithuania and Latvia are effectively the same size — one jail, two cells.

peg · 26 = NOTCH, the small twin of North Macedonia. A notch where three borders meet.

peg · 65 = JAIL, the second cell. Note that Latvia has two thirds of Lithuania's people on the same land.

peg · 2 = n = NOAH. Noah's ark moored at the harbour, and there is no room for a second one.

peg · 34 = MOWER, the small twin of Finland's 338,000. A mower between two rivers.

peg · 14 = t-r = TYRE. A tyre rolling down a black mountain.

peg · 26 = n-ch = NOTCH. A notch cut out of the southern Balkans.

peg · 32 = m-n = MOON. A small moon between Sicily and Africa.

peg · 42 = r-n = RAIN. Rain on a very small, very crowded country.

peg · 39 = m-p = MAP. A map that is almost entirely coastline.

peg · 31 = m-t = MAT. A flat mat — which is exactly Poland's strategic problem.

peg · 92 = p-n = PAN. A pan on the Atlantic edge, just under Hungary's puma.

peg · 24 = NERO again. This is the collision worth knowing: the UK feels large and Romania feels small, and they are the same.

peg · 77 = k-k = CAKE. A cake at the Balkan crossroads, everyone wanting a slice.

peg · 17 = t-k = TACK. One tack pinning down an eighth of the world.

peg · 45 = r-l = RAIL. A rail line running the length of it, mostly through nobody.

peg · 20 = n-s = NOSE. A nose poking out of the Alps toward the sea.

peg · 49 = r-p = ROPE. A rope strung along the Carpathians.

peg · 61 = ch-t = SHEET. A single sheet thrown over Monte Titano.

peg · 60 = ch-s = CHEESE. A wheel of cheese the size of the breadbasket.

peg · 49 = ROPE, the small twin of Slovakia's 49,000. A rope marking out a garden.

peg · 11 = TIDE, the small twin of Bulgaria's 111,000.

peg · TIRANA — whose mayor had the grey communist blocks painted in wild colours to make the city feel alive again.

peg · A black double-headed eagle on blood red — Skanderbeg's banner. Montenegro's eagle is *gold on red with a gold border*; Albania's is black, bare, and fills the field.

peg · Seventy kilometres from Italy across the strait — close enough that Albanians watched Italian television through communism, which is how the isolation broke.

peg · The archduke shot in SARAJEVO in 1914, and the city under siege for 1,425 days from 1992 — the same street corner starting and ending a European century.

peg · The yellow triangle is the *shape of the country* and its three points are the three peoples — Bosniak, Croat, Serb. Designed by an outsider in 1998 precisely because no internal design could be agreed.

peg · A landlocked country with just enough coastline to cut Croatia's in half.

peg · A SOFA in the Balkans — and the city is named for the church of Saint Sophia, "holy wisdom".

peg · Russia's white-blue-red with the blue swapped for *green* — white peace, green land, red blood. Hungary is the near-miss: red-white-green, same palette, different order.

peg · The Danube is its northern border and the Black Sea its eastern one — a country boxed in by a river and a sea.

peg · ZAG-REB: a zig-zag rebel holding the inland corner while the coast gets all the tourists.

peg · The sahovnica — an actual chessboard on the flag. No other national flag has one; if you see checks, it is Croatia.

peg · A boomerang, or a pair of jaws closing around Bosnia — and its coastal strip is cut in two by Bosnia's tiny outlet at Neum.

peg · POD-GORITSA, "under the little hill" — and Montenegro means "black mountain", so the capital sits under the thing the country is named for.

peg · The only Balkan flag that is essentially a *coat of arms on red* rather than stripes — gold-framed, like a picture hung on a wall.

peg · A wall of black limestone dropping straight into the sea — never fully conquered by the Ottomans because there was nothing worth climbing for.

peg · SKOPJE — rebuilt after the 1963 earthquake, then filled with enormous neoclassical statues in the 2010s to argue about Alexander.

peg · A child's drawing of the sun on a red field. The current design replaced the Vergina Sun in 1995 after Greece objected — the rays got simpler to end a quarrel.

peg · Landlocked, and its name, its language and its church have each been contested by a different neighbour.

peg · BUCHAREST — where Ceausescu built the Palace of the Parliament, the heaviest building on Earth, by demolishing a fifth of the old city.

peg · France's tricolour with the white swapped for gold. Chad's flag is nearly identical (a darker blue), and Moldova is this flag *plus an aurochs* — Moldova is Romania with a bull on it.

peg · A Latin island in a Slavic sea — the language is Romance, the neighbours are not, and the Carpathians curl through the middle like a question mark.

peg · BELGRADE, the "white city" — a white fortress standing where the Sava runs into the Danube. It has been fought over roughly 115 times.

peg · The pan-Slavic bands *inverted* — Russia is white-blue-red top-down, Serbia is red-blue-white. Serbia turns Russia upside down and pins an eagle on it.

peg · The hub of the Balkans — everyone else's neighbour, sitting on the Danube corridor from Central Europe to the Black Sea.

peg · PRISHTINA, with a statue of Bill Clinton on Bill Clinton Boulevard — the 1999 intervention is written into the street map.

peg · The country drawn on its own flag under six stars for six communities. Blue-and-gold-and-stars is deliberate EU mimicry — the flag is an application form.

peg · A basin ringed by mountains, the historic heart of medieval Serbia with an overwhelmingly Albanian population — the entire dispute in one sentence.

peg · MINSK — near-annihilated in the war and rebuilt as a Stalinist showpiece, the most Soviet-looking capital still standing.

peg · The only national flag carrying a strip of *embroidery* — a woven folk pattern running up the pole like a decorated sleeve.

peg · "White Rus" — flat forest on the direct road from Warsaw to Moscow, which is why every invasion of Russia has crossed it.

peg · TALL-INN: a tall medieval inn behind the best-preserved city wall on the Baltic. The name means "Danish town".

peg · Blue sky, black soil, white snow — read top to bottom as a landscape. It is the only European tricolour with a *black* middle band.

peg · Eighty kilometres of water to Finland, and the languages are cousins — Estonian is Finno-Ugric, not Baltic or Slavic.

peg · VILNIUS — the Grand Duke dreamt of an iron wolf howling on the hill and founded the city on the spot.

peg · Sun, forest, blood — the only Baltic flag with no blue or white at all. If it looks African rather than Nordic, it is Lithuania.

peg · The Suwalki Gap — the 65 km of Lithuanian-Polish border between Belarus and Kaliningrad, and the most nervously watched strip of land in NATO.

peg · A RIG on the Daugava — Riga was the Hanseatic League's great Baltic port, all masts and rigging.

peg · Austria's flag left out in the rain: the red has gone *dark* and the white band has shrunk to a thin line. Austria = bright red, equal thirds. Latvia = carmine, thin white.

peg · The one in the middle, and the only Baltic capital that is also the region's largest city.

peg · KEE-SHI-NOW, sitting on wine cellars — Milestii Mici holds the world's largest wine collection, in 200 km of tunnels.

peg · Romania with a bull's head bolted on. Same three bands in the same order; the aurochs is the only difference, and it is the difference that matters.

peg · The half of historic Moldavia that ended up outside Romania — which is why it speaks Romanian and keeps arguing about whether to rejoin.

peg · MOSCOW — the Kremlin, "the fortress", with St Basil's onion domes outside its wall.

peg · Peter the Great copied the Dutch flag in the shipyards and reordered it. Netherlands = red-white-blue. Russia = white-blue-red. Serbia = red-blue-white *with an eagle*. Three permutations, one palette — this is the pan-Slavic root.

peg · Three quarters of the land is in Asia and three quarters of the people are in Europe — the country is a head in Europe with a very long body behind it.

peg · KYIV — Kievan Rus, the medieval state from which Russia, Ukraine and Belarus all claim descent. The argument over that inheritance is not academic.

peg · Blue sky over a wheat field — the flag is a photograph of the country. Two bands only, no third: Sweden shares the palette but puts the yellow in a cross.

peg · The black-earth breadbasket on the open steppe — the most fertile soil in Europe with no natural defensive line anywhere across it.

peg · A LONE DON — a solitary Oxford don rowing down the Thames past Big Ben.

peg · Three saints stacked in order of joining: Andrew's blue-and-white base, George's red cross bolted on top, Patrick's red diagonal slid in *off-centre* — the offset is the tell, and it is why the flag has a right way up.

peg · The one European country whose only land border is with a country it used to own.

peg · A DOUBLE PINT of stout — "doublin'" the Guinness.

peg · Green Catholic and orange Protestant with white peace held between them — the flag is a *proposal*, not a description. Green first because Ireland is the Emerald Isle and green leads.

peg · The last land before the Atlantic — which is why the weather arrives there first and why emigration went west.

peg · A PLAGUE column standing in the old town square — Prague still has one, put up after the epidemic.

peg · Poland's flag with a blue wedge hammered into it. The blue triangle was added to distinguish it from Poland — and Czechia kept the flag after the 1993 split, so Slovakia had to make a new one.

peg · A bowl ringed by mountains in the middle of Europe — the Bohemian basin, the most naturally defensible territory in Central Europe.

peg · BUDA on the hills, PEST on the flats, one bridge and one hyphen away — two cities merged in 1873.

peg · Italy's tricolour rotated flat and reversed — Hungary is red-white-green horizontal, Italy is green-white-red vertical. Same three colours, both axes swapped.

peg · A grassland basin walled by the Carpathians — the westernmost point the steppe reaches, which is why a steppe people ended up settling there.

peg · A WAR SAW cutting the city in half — Warsaw was deliberately razed in 1944 and rebuilt from paintings.

peg · The white eagle above the red field of blood. Monaco and Indonesia are the exact inversion — red over white. If the *white is on top*, it is Poland.

peg · Flat, open, and directly between Germany and Russia — the country with no defensible border, which is why its borders kept moving.

peg · LOVE-YAH-NA — the city's name is popularly read as "the beloved", and it puts a dragon on its bridge.

peg · Pan-Slavic bands with a *mountain and three stars* in the corner. Slovenia = the mountain shield; Slovakia = the double cross; Russia = no shield at all.

peg · The Alpine corner of the Balkans — the first republic out of Yugoslavia, and the only one that left after a ten-day war.

peg · A BRAT SLAV-ing away on the Danube — and Bratislava is the only capital bordering two other countries.

peg · The pan-Slavic bands with a *double* cross planted on three hills. Slovenia's shield is a white mountain and stars; Slovakia's is a double cross. Double cross = Slovakia.

peg · The Hungarian half of Czechoslovakia — ruled from Budapest for a thousand years, which is why it differs from Czechia at all.

peg · The rule is that capitals were often chosen as *compromises* — a smaller neutral city that no rival region resented.

peg · Italy is the only country on Earth containing two other sovereign states. Monaco is the near-miss — it escapes by touching the sea.

peg · Only two on Earth, and one of them is in Europe. To reach the sea from Vaduz you must cross two national borders before you even start.

peg · Two pairs and an original. Denmark is the plain original. Norway and Iceland are the outlined pair, and they are colour-swaps of each other (red ground / blue ground). Sweden and Finland are the unoutlined pair, and they are the cold-and-warm split on the same two ideas. Outline present = Norway or Iceland.

peg · Poland's white eagle flies *above* the blood. Monaco and Indonesia bleed downward. The only distinction between Monaco and Indonesia is the proportions, and no one can tell at a glance — which is the point of remembering that they collide.

peg · Latvia is Austria after a long winter — the red has darkened and the white has been squeezed nearly shut.

peg · Start with Russia as the bare form. Serbia flips it and adds an eagle. Slovakia and Slovenia keep Russia's order and each add a shield — cross for Slovakia, mountain for Slovenia (S-l-o-v-a for the cross of the *altar*, S-l-o-v-e for the *elevation*). Czechia is the odd one: it abandoned stripes for a wedge.

peg · France invented the form; everyone else filled in different colours. Note the three-way pile-up on blue-yellow-red: Romania is bare, Moldova has a bull, Andorra has a full shield. And Ireland-versus-Italy turns on one band — orange or red.

peg · The two states at the centre of European neutrality and European faith are the two that refuse the standard rectangle.

peg · "Andorra the Old" — the highest capital in Europe at about 1,000 m.

peg · France's blue and Spain's gold-and-red fused into one flag — which is exactly Andorra's constitution: co-ruled by a French head of state and a Spanish bishop.

peg · A country made of the crease between two mountain slopes — it survived because nobody could be bothered to march up it.

peg · A MAD RIDER on a bull, dead centre of the peninsula — Madrid sits almost exactly at Spain's geometric centre, which is why it was chosen.

peg · A fat gold stripe of sun squeezed between two red bands, with the Pillars of Hercules in the arms. Austria is red-white-red in equal thirds; Spain's middle band is twice the others and gold.

peg · The peninsula that faces two oceans and Africa at once — fourteen kilometres from Morocco at Gibraltar.

peg · A LIZARD BONE washed up on the Tagus after the 1755 earthquake that flattened the city.

peg · A navigator's brass globe bolted onto the seam — the armillary sphere is a *navigation instrument*, and Portugal's whole identity is the Age of Discovery.

peg · The Atlantic edge of Europe — one land neighbour, one ocean, and every ambition pointed out to sea.

peg · NICK-O-SEE-YA: the last divided capital in Europe, split by the Green Line since 1974.

peg · The island drawn in *copper* — the metal is named after Cyprus, not the other way round — with olive branches begging the two communities to stop. Deliberately uses neither Greek blue nor Turkish red.

peg · Further east than Istanbul — geographically Asian, politically European.

peg · ATHENA on her Acropolis, still standing over the city that took her name.

peg · Nine stripes for the nine syllables of "Eleftheria i Thanatos" — freedom or death. Count the stripes and you are counting the slogan.

peg · More coastline than any other Balkan state and almost no arable interior — which is why Greeks went to sea and colonised outward rather than farming inward.

peg · All ROADS lead there — ROME is the road-hub itself.

peg · A margherita pizza stood on its side: basil, mozzarella, tomato, in that order from the pole. Ireland is the confusable one — Ireland's third band is *orange*, Italy's is red, and Italy's green is darker.

peg · A boot kicking Sicily into the middle of the Mediterranean — and the only country containing two other whole countries.

peg · A VALET waiting at the gate of a knight's fortress — the city was built by the Knights of St John and named for Grand Master Jean de Valette.

peg · The George Cross is on the flag because the whole *island* was awarded it in 1942 for surviving the siege — the only national flag carrying a foreign decoration.

peg · The stepping stone between Europe and Africa — which is why everyone from the Phoenicians to the Royal Navy wanted the harbour.

peg · City of San Marino, on Monte Titano — country and capital share the name, like Monaco and Luxembourg.

peg · Cloud over sky, with three towers pinned on the join. The three towers are the three peaks of Monte Titano and they are literally still standing.

peg · The world's oldest surviving republic, claiming AD 301 — it outlasted every empire around it by being too small and too high to be worth taking.

peg · The state *is* the city — 0.49 km2, the smallest country on Earth.

peg · Gold key and silver key crossed — the keys to heaven, in the two metals. The second of only two square national flags, with Switzerland.

peg · A walled garden inside another country's capital city.

peg · A COPPER HEN roosting on a Danish pastry — copper-hen, Copenhagen.

peg · The plainest cross on the plainest red: nothing added, because it was first. Everything else in the Nordic set is this flag edited.

peg · Denmark is the cork in the Baltic's bottle: everything sailing out of the Baltic squeezes past it.

peg · A fish's FIN, and a HEEL SINKING into one of the thousand lakes.

peg · Inverted Sweden and drained of gold: white snow, blue lakes. Finland's cross is *cold*.

peg · The Nordic that leans east — it is the one with the long Russian border, and that fact drives most of its history.

peg · RAKE-YA-VIK: a Viking raking steam off a hot spring.

peg · Norway's flag with the colours swapped — blue ground, red cross. Norway is red-with-blue, Iceland is blue-with-red.

peg · The one Nordic that is not attached to anything — a volcano rafting on the seam between two continental plates, which is why it keeps erupting.

peg · A Norse longboat drifting up a fjord OH-SO-SLOW.

peg · Denmark's flag with a blue fjord knifed down the middle of the white cross. Norway was ruled from Copenhagen — so its flag is Denmark's, cut.

peg · The rim of the Scandinavian bowl — long, thin, and all coast.

peg · A STOCK pot of meatballs carried HOME across fourteen islands.

peg · The only *warm* cross in the set — gold on blue, an IKEA bag. Sweden and Ukraine are the two blue-and-yellow states; Sweden puts the yellow in a cross, Ukraine in a stripe.

peg · The wide half of the Scandinavian peninsula — Norway got the coast, Sweden got the land.

peg · 80 = f-s = VASE. A vase in a mountain shop.

peg · 28 = n-f = KNIFE. A knife on the Adriatic.

peg · 9 = b = BEE. Austria, Belarus and Switzerland form the nine-million swarm — three bees, all landlocked, none in the EU core together.

peg · 32 = m-n = MOON. A moon over Sarajevo.

peg · 12 = t-n = TIN. The toffee tin next door to the Dutch toffee.

peg · 64 = ch-r = CHAIR. An empty chair — Bulgaria has the steepest population decline in the world.

peg · 9 = BEE, the second of the swarm.

peg · 9 = BEE, the third. A bee in a bank vault.

peg · 13 = t-m = TOMB. An ancient tomb on a divided island.

peg · 11 = t-d = TIDE. Czechia, Sweden and Portugal all sit at roughly eleven million — one tide, three shores.

peg · 84 = f-r = FIRE. A forge burning at the centre of Europe.

peg · 60 = ch-s = CHEESE. Danish cheese, six million wheels.

peg · 14 = t-r = TYRE. The last turn of the knob: Lithuania 2.9, Latvia 1.9, Estonia 1.4.

peg · 48 = r-f = ROOF. Red tiles over a Spanish courtyard.

peg · 56 = l-sh = LEASH. Finland and Norway are both 5.6 — two dogs on one leash across the top of Europe.

peg · 68 = ch-f = CHEF. Of course. And note France sits one below the UK — the two have been neck and neck for a decade.

peg · 69 = sh-p = SHIP. Which is the whole of British history in one word.

peg · 10 = t-s = TOES. Ten toes, ten million, and Greece has the coastline to dip them in.

peg · 39 = m-p = MAP. A map, because Croatia's shape is the thing you remember about it.

peg · 10 = TOES, rounding up. Hungary and Greece are the two just-under-ten states.

peg · 54 = LYRE — and the harp is literally Ireland's state emblem. The one country in Europe whose population has not yet recovered from the 1840s.

peg · 39 = MAP, the small twin of Croatia. A map with almost nobody on it.

peg · 59 = l-p = LIP. A lip, because Italy is shrinking and pursing.

peg · 40 = r-s = ROSE. A single rose in an alpine valley.

peg · 29 = n-b = KNOB. Turn the knob: Lithuania is the biggest Baltic, then Latvia, then Estonia, descending as you go north.

peg · 67 = ch-k = SHACK. A small shack stuffed with bankers from everywhere else.

peg · 19 = t-p = TAP, dripping — the small twin of Romania's 19 million.

peg · 39 = MAP, the smallest of the three. Croatia 3.9 million, Iceland 390 thousand, Monaco 39 thousand — one image, three magnitudes, descending.

peg · 24 = n-r = NERO. An emperor in a wine cellar.

peg · 62 = ch-n = CHAIN. A chain of black mountains.

peg · 18 = t-f = TOFFEE, a single sweet — the small twin of the Netherlands' 18 million.

peg · 56 = LEASH, the smallest of the three. Finland, Norway, Malta: same digits, wildly different densities.

peg · 18 = t-f = TOFFEE. Packed tight in the tin, which is the density. Collides with North Macedonia at 1.8 million.

peg · 56 = LEASH, the twin of Finland. Same size, opposite coasts.

peg · 37 = m-k = MUG. A mug of something warm, sitting just under Ukraine.

peg · 11 = TIDE, the third of them. Czechia, Sweden, Portugal — landlocked, frozen, Atlantic.

peg · 19 = t-p = TAP. Note the collision with Latvia at 1.9 million — same digits, one order of magnitude apart. Romania is the big tap, Latvia the dripping one.

peg · 66 = ch-ch = CHOO-CHOO. A train through Belgrade, the Balkan junction.

peg · 144 = t-r-r = TERROR. The bear's grip. Also the only European figure needing three digits.

peg · 11 = TIDE again. Sweden is the *empty* eleven: same people as Czechia spread over five times the land.

peg · 21 = n-t = NET. A net strung between the Alps and the Adriatic.

peg · 54 = l-r = LYRE. Slovakia and Ireland are both 5.4 — two lyres, one Celtic and one Slavic.

peg · 34 = m-r = MOWER. A lawnmower on Monte Titano.

peg · 38 = m-v = MOVIE. A film reel running, because this is the one number in the file that is actively changing.

peg · 8 = v = IVY. A single strand of ivy on the wall. Eight hundred people, and most of them work there rather than live there.

peg · 16 = d-sh = DISH. A dish being passed to a very young family.

peg · A VEIN of Danube water running through a Viennese coffee house.

peg · The Duke's tunic soaked in blood except under the belt. Latvia is the same idea in *dark* red with a *narrower* white band; Austria's red is bright and the bands are equal thirds.

peg · The leftover of an empire — eight neighbours because it used to contain most of them.

peg · BRUSSELS SPROUTS served at every EU summit table.

peg · Germany's colours stood upright. Belgium borrowed the French *form* and the German *palette* — which is Belgium in one image.

peg · The cockpit of Europe — flat, small, and directly on the road from Germany to France, so every invasion crosses it.

peg · A BEAR — Bern's own emblem, and the city name — sitting in a Swiss bank vault. (Bern's bear pits are real.)

peg · The only *square* national flag in Europe, and the Red Cross is its exact inversion — the organisation was founded in Geneva and honoured its host by flipping the colours.

peg · The mountain in the middle of everyone — neutral because it is defensible, rich because everyone needs to cross it.

peg · A BEAR LEANING on the Brandenburg Gate — and the bear is genuinely Berlin's civic symbol.

peg · Read it downward as German history: black night of division, red blood of revolution, gold of unity. Belgium has the same three colours *vertical*; Germany lays them flat.

peg · Nine neighbours, more than any other European country — the country in the middle with no natural frontier, which is the fact most of European history turns on.

peg · PAIR OF ICE skates cutting figure-eights round the Eiffel Tower.

peg · The ancestor of every tricolour. Blue and red are the colours of Paris; white is the Bourbon monarchy — the Revolution literally pinned the city around the king.

peg · The hexagon — the only large European state touching both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, which is the whole reason it mattered.

peg · VAH-DOOTS: a tiny alpine yodel, over in a second — like the country.

peg · The crown was added in 1937 after Liechtenstein discovered at the Berlin Olympics that its flag was identical to Haiti's. The crown exists purely to end a collision.

peg · Doubly landlocked — one of only two on Earth, with Uzbekistan.

peg · The country is so small the capital did not bother changing its name.

peg · The Netherlands, sun-bleached. Same three bands, same order, but the blue is pale — Luxembourg is the *faded* Dutch flag.

peg · A wedge driven into the seam where Belgium, Germany and France meet — a fortress that became a bank.

peg · A city-state — the capital is the country, the way Vatican City and Singapore are.

peg · Poland upside down. Poland is white-over-red (eagle on blood), Monaco is red-over-white — and Indonesia is Monaco again, just a longer rectangle.

peg · The second-smallest country on Earth after Vatican City, and almost all of its coastline is a racetrack.

peg · A DAM on the river Amstel, holding back the sea — the name is the engineering.

peg · Luxembourg's flag with the blue turned *dark*. Red-white-blue horizontal is Dutch; white-blue-red horizontal is Russian — Peter the Great copied it from the Dutch shipyards and rotated the order.

peg · The drain of Europe — three great rivers empty here, which made it rich on trade and permanently at war with water.