Questions about Central Europe?

Question

Are Czechs considered Czechoslovakians, if they were born in the time before the split?

Also does Austria, Hungary, Czech, and Slovakia share any mountain ranges?

Answer 1

There were no Czechoslovakians even before the split. Slovaks and Czechs make two slightly different nation with very similar culture, but different history - Czechs live in Bohemia which used to be an independent kingdom in the middle ages but during the 30 years war got annexed by Austria and it held it until 1918 as a partially autonomous province. On the other side, Slovakia was always a part of Hungary (by the way, this caused that Slovakia is even today less developed than Czech republic). After the WWI, both nations united even though not all Slovaks like the idea of common state and when Hitler gave them the opportunity to make their "independent" (rather a puppet one, actually) fascist state, they accepted, so you can see that national tension was always a somewhat big issue.

I would also add that there are also Czechs who consider themselves to be Moravians (Moravia is the eastern part of Czech republic with Brno as it's unofficial capital), but this nationality doesn't officially exist.

And yes, there are the Carpathian Mountains (or karpaty in Czech and Slovak) that begin in Beskydy (Czech republic) and Österreichisch-Südmährische Karpaten (Austria) and continue in Slovakia where they build up most of the country's inner parts with the Tatra mountains being the highest of the whole range (Gerlachovsky stit - over 2600 m), the range continues further in Ukraine, Hungary and Romania.

You may find more information on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpathian_...

Answer 2

No, I think Czech people like to be called Czech, even if they were born before the split.  The people are different and have different languages.  The country was put together after World War II I think and wasn't planned properly.  Supposedly the Czech economy is significantly stronger than Slovak economy which got the czech people upset presplit that they were doing all the work to improve the economy while the slovaks went along for the ride