Many species of birds live on insects, small water creatures or other food that cannot easily be found during cold winter months. Some travel thousands of kilometres, across the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert, to spend the winter in Africa. This seasonal travelling is called migrating. When spring comes to Europe March to May , the weather gets warmer. Snow and ice melt. Baby fish and insect larvae swarm in the streams and ponds.
Migrating birds return to make their nests and raise their families. Flowers open and bees carry pollen from one plant to another. Trees put out new leaves which catch the sunlight and use its energy to make the tree grow. In mountain regions, farmers move their cows up into the high meadows, where there is now plenty of fresh grass. Cold-blooded animals such as reptiles also need the sun to give them energy.
In summer, especially in southern Europe, you will often see lizards basking in the sunshine and hear the chirping of grasshoppers and cicadas. Autumn: a time of change Wasps love fruit too! In late summer and autumn, the days grow shorter and the nights cooler. Many delicious fruits ripen at this time of year and farmers are kept busy harvesting them.
Nuts too ripen in autumn and squirrels will gather and store heaps of them ready for the winter. Many trees shed their leaves in autumn because there is no longer enough sunshine for the leaves to be useful. They gradually change from green to shades of yellow, red, gold and brown.
Then they fall, carpeting the ground with colour. The fallen leaves decay, enriching the soil and providing food for future generations of plant life.
This yearly cycle of the seasons and the changes it brings, make the European countryside what it is — beautiful, and very varied. On high mountains and in the far north of Europe, farming is impossible because it is too cold for crops to grow.
But evergreen trees such as pines and firs can survive cold winters. People use the wood from these forests to make many things — from houses and furniture to paper and cardboard packaging. Further south, most of the land is suitable for farming. It produces a wide variety of crops including wheat, maize, sugar beet, potatoes and all sorts of fruit and vegetables. Where there is plenty of sunshine and hardly any frost near the Mediterranean, for example , farmers can grow fruit such as oranges and lemons, grapes and olives.
Olives contain oil which can be squeezed out of the fruit and used in preparing food. Grapes are squeezed to get the juice, which can be turned into wine. Europe is famous for its very good wines, which are sold all over the world. Mediterranean farmers also grow lots of other fruit and vegetables. Tomatoes, for example, ripen well in the southern sunshine.
But vegetables need plenty of water, so farmers in hot, dry regions will often have to irrigate their crops. That means giving them water from rivers or from under the ground. Grass grows easily where there is enough rain, even if the soil is shallow or not very fertile.
Many European farmers keep animals that eat grass —such as cows, sheep or goats. They provide milk, meat and other useful products like wool and leather. Many farmers also keep pigs or chickens. These animals can be raised almost anywhere because they can be kept indoors and given specially prepared feed. Chickens provide not only meat but eggs too and some farms produce thousands of eggs every day.
Farms in Europe range from very big to very small. Some have large fields — which makes it easy to harvest crops using big machines. Others, for example in hilly areas, may have small fields. Walls or hedgerows between fields help stop the wind and rain from carrying away soil and they can be good for wildlife too.
Many city people like to spend weekends and holidays in the European countryside, enjoying the scenery, the peace and quiet and the fresh air. We all need to do what we can to look after the countryside and keep it beautiful. Europe has thousands and thousands of kilometres of coastline, which nature has shaped in various ways.
There are tall rocky cliffs and beaches of sand or colourful pebbles formed by the sea as it pounds away at the rocks, century after century. In Norway, glaciers have carved the coast into steep-sided valleys called fjords.
In some other countries, the sea and wind pile up the sand into dunes. It reaches a height of metres. They provide food for sea birds, and for marine mammals such as seals. Where rivers flow into the sea, flocks of waders come to feed, at low tide, on creatures that live in the mud. The sea is important for people too. Here they are unloaded on to trains, lorries and barges.
Then the ships load up with goods that have been produced here and that are going to be sold on other continents. She was built in France and first set sail in You can enjoy all kinds of water sports, from surfing and boating to waterskiing and scuba diving. Fishing Fishing trawlers. Fishing has always been important for people in Europe. Whole towns have grown up around fishing harbours and thousands of people earn their living by catching and selling fish or providing for the fishermen and their families.
Modern fishing boats, such as factory trawlers, can catch huge numbers of fish. To make sure that enough are left in the sea, European countries have agreed rules about how many fish can be caught and about using nets that let young fish escape.
Another way to make sure we have enough fish is to farm them. On the coasts of northern Europe, salmon are reared in large cages in the sea. Shellfish such as mussels, oysters and clams can be farmed in the same way.
So we need to look after them. We have to prevent them from becoming polluted by waste from factories and towns. Oil tankers sometimes have accidents, spilling huge amounts of oil into the sea.
This can turn beaches black and kill thousands of seabirds. European countries are working together to try to prevent these things from happening again and to make sure that our coastline will remain beautiful for future generations to enjoy.
Over thousands of years, Europe has changed enormously. Wikimedia The earliest Europeans were hunters and gatherers. On the walls of some caves they made wonderful paintings of hunting scenes. Eventually, they learnt farming and began breeding animals, growing crops and living in villages. They made their weapons and tools from stone — by sharpening pieces of flint, for example. Several thousand years BC before the birth of Christ , people discovered how to make various sorts of metals by heating different kinds of rock in a very hot fire.
Bronze — a mixture of copper and tin — was hard enough for making tools and weapons. Gold and silver were soft but very beautiful and could be shaped into ornaments. Later, an even harder metal was discovered: iron.
But making steel was very tricky, so good swords were rare and valuable! In Greece about 4 years ago, people began to build cities. At first they were ruled by kings. Instead of having a king, the men of Athens took decisions by voting. Democracy is an important European invention that has spread around the world. But the Romans were very well organised, their army was very good at fighting and they gradually conquered all the lands around the Mediterranean.
Eventually the Roman empire stretched all the way from northern England to the Sahara Desert and from the Atlantic to Asia. Mosaics are made using tiny pieces of stone, enamel, glass or ceramic and are used to decorate buildings.
The Middle Ages roughly to AD When the Roman empire collapsed, different parts of Europe were taken over by different peoples. For example …. In these parts of Europe, Celtic languages and culture are very much alive.
The Germanic peoples Not all of them settled in Germany:. A famous Norman tapestry shows scenes from this conquest. It is kept in a museum in the French town of Bayeux. After the Magyars settled in the Carpathian Basin in the 9th and 10th centuries, they founded the Kingdom of Hungary in the year Their descendants today live in Hungary and other neighbouring countries. During the Middle Ages, kings and nobles in Europe often quarrelled and there were many wars.
This was the time when knights in armour fought on horseback. To defend themselves from attack, kings and nobles often lived in strong castles, with thick stone walls. Some castles were so strong that they are still standing today. Christianity became the main religion in Europe during the Middle Ages and churches were built almost everywhere. Some of them are very impressive — especially the great cathedrals, with their tall towers and colourful stained-glass windows.
Monks were involved in farming and helped develop agriculture all over Europe. They also set up schools and produced beautifully illustrated books. Their monasteries often had libraries where important books from ancient times were preserved. In southern Spain, where Islam was the main religion, the rulers built beautiful mosques and minarets. During the Middle Ages, most people could not read or write and they knew only what they learnt in church.
Only monasteries and universities had copies of the books written by the ancient Greeks and Romans. But in the s and s, students began rediscovering the ancient books. They were amazed at the great ideas and knowledge they found there and the news began to spread. Wealthy and educated people, for example in Florence Italy , became very interested. They could afford to buy books — especially once printing was invented in Europe — and they fell in love with ancient Greece and Rome.
They had their homes modelled on Roman palaces and they paid talented artists and sculptors to decorate them with scenes from Greek and Roman stories and with statues of gods, heroes and emperors.
It was as if a lost world of beauty and wisdom had been reborn. It all began with an energy crisis. For thousands of years, people had been burning wood and charcoal. But now, parts of Europe were running out of forests! What else could they use as fuel? The answer was coal. There was plenty of it in Europe and miners began digging for it.
Coal powered the newly invented steam engines. Soon Europe was producing huge quantities of it and it changed the world! Cheap steel made it possible to build skyscrapers, huge bridges, ocean liners, cars, fridges … Powerful guns and bombs too. At the time of the Renaissance, trade with distant lands was becoming very important for European merchants. For example, they were selling goods in India and bringing back valuable spices and precious stones.
But travelling overland was difficult and took a long time, so the merchants wanted to reach India by sea. The problem was, Africa was in the way — and it is very big! However, if the world really was round as people were beginning to believe , European ships ought to be able to reach India by sailing west.
So, in , Christopher Columbus and his sailors set out from Spain and crossed the Atlantic. But instead of reaching India they discovered the Bahamas islands in the Caribbean Sea, near the coast of America. Other explorers soon followed. In —, Vasco da Gama — a Portuguese naval officer — was the first European to reach India by sailing around Africa. In , another Portuguese explorer — Ferdinand Magellan, working for the King of Spain — led the first European expedition to sail right around the world!
In other words, they took over the land, claiming it now belonged to their home country in Europe. They took their beliefs, customs and languages with them — and that is how English and French came to be the main languages spoken in North America and Spanish and Portuguese in Central and South America. Sailors returning from these distant lands reported seeing strange creatures very different from those in Europe.
In the s, European explorers went deep into Africa and by European nations had colonised most of the African continent. Meanwhile, back in Europe, scientists were finding out more and more about about how the universe works. Geologists, studying rocks and fossils, began wondering how the Earth had been formed and how old it really was. In the s, people were asking other important questions too — such as how countries should be governed and what rights and freedoms people should have.
The writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau said that everyone should be equal. Another writer, Voltaire, said the world would be better if reason and knowledge replaced ignorance and superstition. Other European inventions from the 19th and 20th centuries helped create the world we know today. For example:. Today, roughly a quarter of the people working in Europe are producing things needed for the modern world: food and drinks; mobile phones and computers; clothes and furniture; washing machines and televisions; cars, buses and lorries and lots more besides.
In other words, they work in shops and post offices, banks and insurance companies, hotels and restaurants, hospitals and schools, etc. Sadly, the story of Europe is not all about great achievements we can be proud of. There are also many things to be ashamed of. Down the centuries, European nations fought terrible wars against each other.
These wars were usually about power and property or religion. European colonists killed millions of native people on other continents — by fighting or mistreating them or by accidentally spreading European diseases among them. Europeans also took millions of Africans to work as slaves. Lessons had to be learnt from these dreadful wrongdoings.
The European slave trade was abolished in the s. Colonies gained their freedom in the s. And peace did come to Europe at last. Regrettably, there have been many quarrels in the European family. Often they were about who should rule a country or which country owned which piece of land. Sometimes a ruler wanted to gain more power by conquering his neighbours or to prove that his people were stronger and better than other peoples.
One way or another, for hundreds of years, there were terrible wars in Europe. In the 20th century, two big wars started on this continent but spread and involved countries all around the world. They killed millions of people and left Europe poor and in ruins.
Could anything be done to stop these things happening again? Would Europeans ever learn to sit down together and discuss things instead of fighting?
We Europeans belong to many different countries, with different languages, traditions, customs and beliefs. Yet we belong together, like a big family, for all sorts of reasons. The Second World War ended in It had been a time of terrible destruction and killing and it had started in Europe. The Kaiser and his wife took a ride on it in , hence the Kaiserwagen carriage 5 with its velvet upholstery and gold trimmings, which has since been restored and can be ridden at weekends.
An even more famous journey was undertaken by a circus elephant called Tuffi, who was put on it as a publicity stunt in but panicked in the overcrowded carriage and plunged into the river Wupper below.
She survived with only minor injuries, as did her story, which has been retold to German children ever since. It remains the transport of choice for Wuppertalers, moving around 25 million passengers a year. Kate Connolly. From the s until the beginning of the 90s, there was a cable car that took you up the mountain. Now the defunct graffiti-laden terminus station, right next to the TV tower, attracts urban explorers. Svetoslav Petrov , editor-in-chief of Boyscout in Bulgaria.
Mark Pickering. Walk along it today, however, and the historic thoroughfare, just five minutes from the city centre, has significantly been transformed. At the western end is the oasis of Nano Nagle Place , a former convent that in was converted into a complex that celebrates the extraordinary life of the eponymous 18th-century pioneer of Catholic education.
Philip Watson. The village of Pyrga lies between Nicosia and Larnaca in the east of Cyprus. It could be mistaken for an old storeroom, except the gothic detail above the door hints at something more special. This building is a medieval royal chapel. Inside, damaged but beautiful frescos look as if they have been transported from medieval France. They tell the story of the marriage of King Janus to Charlotte de Bourbon in , and betray the fact that Cyprus was a medieval French kingdom.
Cyprus has not always been comfortable with its medieval heritage. For some, celebrating this French period and subsequent Venetian rule undermines the claim that Cyprus is a Greek island. Yet the Lusignans and their heirs left some stunning monuments, which easily overshadow the Roman remains at sites like Kourion. Apart from Pyrga, Kolossi and Limassol have two of the most intact Crusader castles , and the capital, Nicosia, is encircled by massive Venetian walls. Most dramatic of all, in the middle of Nicosia, sits the huge 13th-century French gothic Cathedral of St Sophia, which was converted into the the Selimiye Mosque in For a lover of medieval culture like myself, these gothic churches — many of which have been converted into mosques or subsumed into Byzantine structures — make Cyprus an unexpected revelation.
Michael Paraskos, novelist and lecturer. Two former railway sheds are now home to one of the most exciting cultural spaces in Luxembourg City, which is aimed at sharing ideas and fostering new talent. Built in to store steam locomotives, the Rotondes remained underutilised throughout the 20th century one was a warehouse, the other a bus garage. A decade ago the ministry of culture started to renovate these national monuments to host cultural activities, reopening them five years ago.
The Northern roundhouse now hosts exhibitions, lectures, dance, secondhand markets and other events. The Southern roundhouse is a dark, cosy bar that holds quiz nights, concerts and theatre performances.
Once winter is over, the outdoor courtyard is filled with pallet furniture and people drinking and eating — bankers, hipsters, mums, musicians — the place is a magnet for all types, like Luxembourg itself. Wendy Winn, radio presenter. Riga is an architecturally eclectic place with an incredible variety of coexisting styles: you can see the finest examples of art deco, alongside brutalist Soviet architecture and neoclassical buildings.
One of my favourite places to visit is Riga Central Market , a Unesco world heritage site on the banks of the Daugava a few hundred metres from the old town. The five pavilions are former zeppelin hangars, and beneath each cavernous ceiling is a specialist market selling vegetables, dairy, meat, fish and local specialities. This place Agniya Mirgorodskaya, founding director of the Riga Biennial Foundation. In Roubaix, one of the grittier towns in a region once famous for its mines and factories, sits a jewel called La Piscine , an art deco swimming baths transformed into a museum.
When I visited for the first time, the museum was almost empty and the effect was breathtaking. There is more to La Piscine: its permanent collection, which has now been extended into a former factory next door, includes works by Giacometti, Rodin, Claudel and Picasso.
But the pool hall alone is worth the visit. Get off the train at Lille and take the metro for 30 minutes to Roubaix. Paris and Brussels can wait. Kim Willsher. Unlike most European capitals, Bratislava is not overcrowded. I discovered this Danube river walk when I was working in the city and would slip off at lunchtime to stroll beside the water and watch the ducks foraging for food. My favourite is Primi , a chic, Mediterranean-style eatery that serves terrific sea bass and bowls of tasty gazpacho.
I actually had my first date with my now husband here — it must have had a certain kind of magic. Way up north, surrounded by meadows and forests, the border between Sweden and Finland consists of lively rapids called Kukkolaforsen, part of the larger River Torne. At midsummer the sun is up all hours; at midwinter it never rises. The tiny village of Kukkola is the unofficial sauna capital of Sweden. I warmly recommend a sweaty session in the village sauna, a large log cabin that can accommodate 65 fiery enthusiasts on three levels of long benches, heated by a large aggregate that holds kg of stone.
Afterwards you can take a cooling dip in the stream, then head to the local inn for specialities like moose, gravadlax in a cup and coffee cheese with cloudberries. While the extraordinary ancient pyramids of Egypt were constructed in 85 years, between and BC, La Sagrada Familia has been under construction for the past years.
Denmark has some unusual baby naming laws. New parents must name their child one of the 7, pre-approved names, like Benji or Molli. Creative spellings of common names are also not permitted under these laws.
Want to name your kid something unique? You can probably get on board with this fun fact about Europe. While dozens of countries in Europe have chopped and changed their names over the years, Bulgaria has stuck with the same name since it adopted it in AD. When you think of Europe, you probably imagine snowy Alps, lush pine forests and winding rivers, but did you know that there is one last remaining rainforest in Europe?
The British Museum in London is one of the most-visited in the world, with around six million visitors every year. The name is 58 letters long, making it the longest name of any town in Europe, but you can call it Llanfairpwll, or Llanfair PG for short.
Wales might have the longest town name, but Scandinavia takes the crown for the shortest town names. There are 10 villages across Denmark, Sweden and Norway that have names just one single letter long. Some additional fun facts about Europe: 1. Coffee first came to Europe from the Ottoman Empire during the siege of Vienna in Between and , Poland disappeared as a sovereign country after it was split up by Austria, Prussia, and Russia in Nicklaus, came from Izmir, Turkey.
Forty was the number of days trading ships returning to or visiting Venice from abroad had to remain at anchor outside Venice to ensure that no diseases entered the city by the ship crews. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
The Louvre is the most visited attraction in Europe.
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