Is Slovakia Central- or eastern European country? (let’s face it once far all)

*LONG READ*

Recently I saw [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEyY40vY3AM) and I have my say about it. Read it below: 👇🏻

*I often read and hear that Slovakia is an eastern European country.*

*Why?*

*Just because it’s not in western part of Europe.*

*But is it enough to label our country as such? And what makes certain countries eastern European?*

*I also heard some Westerners saying that the term “Central European” is made-up term, just because certain countries (including Slovakia) don’t like facing the “truth” of being eastern European.*

*But here is my take on what can be considered as eastern european features and why Slovakia should be considered as central European country instead.*

# 1. The script

I think we all can agree, that one of the main features of eastern European countries is the cyrilic script. It’s used in alphabets of the official languages of these countries:

* Russia (admit it, this is the very first country popping up in your mind in this regard)
* Ukraine
* Belarus
* Serbia (here is both latin and cyrilic script used officialy)
* Bulgaria
* Northern Macedonia
* (not sure about) Montenegro

Can you see Slovakia here? No, of course. We’re using modified latin alphabet and, little side note, it’s the longest alphabet in Europe. 😎

So the first eastern european feature is eliminated. ❌

# 2. The most dominant religion

Another eastern european feature is an orthodox christianity as a dominant religion. ☦

Orthodox churches are really beautiful and yes, you can find some of them in Slovakia, too. But list of countries, where orthodox religion is dominant, looks like this:

* Russia
* Ukraine
* Belarus
* Moldova
* Romania
* Serbia
* Bulgaria
* Northern Macedonia
* Greece
* Cyprus

Slovakia? Not dominant. ❌ Roman Catholic church is the biggest and most influential religion here. ✝

But yes, you can see many of orthodox or Byzantine Catholic churches, mostly in eastern parts of our country.

Anyway, the second eastern european feature is off. ❌

# 3. The time zone 🕓

I think that another feature we should have a look to, is the time zone. In Europe, you can find four main time zones: Western Time Zone (used in the UK, Ireland and mainland Portugal) – also known as UTC.

Then you have a **CENTRAL** European Time (CET, UTC+1). I intentionally emphasized the word **central**, because this is the time zone that Slovakia uses. And basically every other western European country (except those mentioned previously… and Iceland) uses it.

But these countries – some of them mistakenly labelled as eastern european – uses CET, too:

* Slovenia
* Croatia
* Bosnia and Herzegovina
* Montenegro
* Hungary
* Serbia
* Northern Macedonia
* Albania

Sorry guys. No eastern european time anywhere in Slovakia. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Other time zones are Eastern European Time (EET, UTC+2) and Moscow Time (MSK, UTC+3).

The third feature is definitely out of the table. ❌

# 4. The language 🗨

The last, but not least.

Slovak language is a Slavic language. And I could see in many internet discussions that for many users “Slavic” equals to “eastern”.

Sorry again, but it’s not true. 🙅🏻‍♂️

Slavic languages are divided into three subgroups:

* Eastern: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian
* Southern: Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrian, Bulgarian, Northern Macedonian
* Western: Polish, Czech and……… you guessed it, SLOVAK.

In this regard, we’re just too west to be eastern. 😎

The last eastern european feature is off. ❌

And you know, Finland is more eastern then Slovakia but you don’t call it as such. Why do you do it to us (and to Czechia, Poland and Hungary, too)?

I hope this will be helpful.