Eastern Europe
'Czech Republic' a Bit Difficult? Just Call Us Czechia
Leaders of the Czech Republic are sick of it being one of very few countries in the world that doesn't have a simple one word name in English so they're officially adopting one — Czechia.
Meet the Chef Teaching Estonians to Dine for Pleasure
Chef Tõnis Siigur of Tallinn’s celebrated NOA restaurant sees it as his job to help Estonian diners enjoy food as form of entertainment—a very un-Soviet concept for a country that left communism just 25 years ago.
Are You a Budding Tech Innovator? Head to Repressive Belarus
The former Soviet republic has an abysmal human rights record and an autocratic president, but that's not keeping its tech sector from booming.
The US Is Sending Thousands More Armed Troops and Heavy Weaponry to Eastern Europe
The troops will be on nine-month rotations in the region along NATO's eastern border starting in February 2017 — the first such deployment since the end of the Cold War.
Horse Burgers Could Be on the Menu at Kazakhstan's First McDonald's
Horsemeat is very popular in Kazakhstan, a country filled with steppes and flatlands where horses have been essential to long-distance travel throughout its history.
Yellow Eyes Draws from the Past to Carve Out Black Metal's Future
"If you buy a tape machine and a Fender Squire, there you have the tools to make the coolest black metal record anyone's ever heard in their life. And that can be like $50 in total. There's no financial barrier to making cool, extreme music.”
The Silent Protest of Post-Soviet Graffiti
Alexis Lerner's 'Post-Soviet Graffiti' site is like the "Meanwhile, in Russia..." for activist street art.
Photographing the Search for Belarus's National Identity
Belarus's scars and, more importantly, the heroics of war have become the central focus of a government in search of a unifying national identity.
This Ukrainian Cookbook Is Part Family History, Part Dumpling Heaven
“Cookbooks don’t have to be about recipes from a chef,” says Olia Hercules, author of Mamushka: Recipes from Ukraine & Beyond. “I like recipes because of the stories they might tell about a culture and all these things our grandmothers used to make.”
Using Art to Move Forward After Bosnia's Legacy of Mass Rape
Up to 50,000 women are estimated to have been raped during the Bosnian War. On the 20th anniversary of its peace agreement, feminist artists and activists are questioning what it means to be Bosnian.
An Unknown Black Marketeer from Russia May Have The Fuel for a Nuclear Bomb
US officials say the presence of identical nuclear explosive materials in three separate smuggling incidents indicates someone has a larger cache — and is hunting for a buyer.
Rediscover Failed Eastern Utopias in Stark Winter Photographs
Exploring Danila Tkachenko's silent and snowy photographs of abandoned buildings in Eastern Europe.