You can drive from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean without even showing your passport.
From the Baltic Sea to the Balkan Peninsula, once-captive nations inspired the world when bold patriots stepped forward to regain their countries' sovereignty and their citizens' dignity.
WHITEHOUSE: Presidential Proclamation -- Captive Nations Week, 2012
Mr Milosz liked to describe himself as the last citizen of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a medieval superpower that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea, noted for its religious and cultural tolerance.
Germany is going ahead with a pipeline to bring gas directly from Russia under the Baltic Sea, bypassing eastern Europe.
ECONOMIST: A lesson in how to make friends and influence people
As a public service, it is obliged to deliver letters and packages to every corner of Germany, from islands in the Baltic Sea to the Bavarian Alps (its publicists peddle photographs of loyal employees punting down rivers to reach obscure addresses).
Yet almost at the same time that Russia was making these concessions, a number of media reports have emerged that indicate that Russia is sending a sizable a flotilla of ships drawn from the Baltic, Northern, and Black Sea fleets to Syria.
Kaliningrad is geographically separated from mainland Russia and is wedged between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea.
Western military analysts have noted Russia's use of destroyers and landing craft from the Black Sea and Northern Fleets to back up its feeble Baltic-based naval forces.
They delighted in learning about everything from the Baltic Dry Index (the daily number given to the price of moving raw materials by sea) to the stock of Crocs, which several of them also wore.
This trend will accelerate in 2012, as politicians between the Baltic and the Black Sea ask why they should accept outside advice and instructions from countries that signally fail to practise what they preach.
And after years of untreated waste from Russia's cities and heavy industries, scientists say that the Baltic is in danger of becoming a dead sea.
Most would rather jump into the Baltic Sea with cement boots than spend a lifetime career at Electrolux, sucking customers away from Hoover and Miele.
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