Borderlands

I've been enjoying thinking about the idea of crossing over borders during this trip. Linguistic, religious, sovereign, historic, there's a lot of kinds of borders and there's a lot of overlapping commonalities. I spent a silly amount of time looking this stuff up, but here are some maps with my route overlaid on top. Enjoy!

Europe during the Cold War.
Both Austria and Yugoslavia are colored white, but Austria was much more associated with the West and Yugoslavia with the East I believe. 

Linguistic Groups - Germanic: green, Romance: pale yellow, Slavic: dark yellow

Religions - Protestant: purple, Catholic: Blue, Orthodox: red, Muslim: Green.
It's hard to see on the map but my first stop in a majority Muslim place was in Mostar, Bosnia. 

The Roman Empire. This is interesting to me because it indicates how much experience cultures might have with organized, literate and bureaucratic government institutions. However, in the Yugoslavia and Turkey different populations and cultures have more or less displaced societies existing in Roman times, so perhaps that history doesn't carry any weight.

Europe in 1700. Ottoman Empire is real big, Germany is divided.

Europe in 1900. Austria-Hungary and Germany are bigger now.

aaaand here's a spreadsheet I made of these and other aspects of the places I've been visiting.