About Us
Europe has a talent for keeping old decisions alive.
A medieval land deal can still shape a modern border. A political compromise can survive the country that created it. A temporary solution can become permanent infrastructure. A tiny jurisdiction can end up with an economy, government, or legal system that makes perfect sense only after several paragraphs of explanation.
That is where Europe Is Weird comes in.
We are an independent publication about the strange systems, historical leftovers, borders, economies, political arrangements, and infrastructure that make Europe more complicated than it looks on a map.
The goal is not to collect random trivia. We want to know how the strange thing happened, why it made sense at the time, who had something to gain, and why it is still around now.
Sometimes the answer is surprisingly rational. Sometimes everyone involved inherited a mess and decided reopening it would be worse. Sometimes a country genuinely built its way out of a geographical problem. And sometimes Europe has simply spent 200 years refusing to finish the paperwork.
We cover both old and new Europe: vanished empires that left administrative debris behind, unusual modern governments, bizarre borders, infrastructure built for very specific local problems, economic systems that exist almost nowhere else, and current projects that deserve more than a press-release explanation.
The common thread is simple: there has to be more to the story than “that’s weird.”
How we work
Our articles are researched using official documents, government sources, historical records, academic research, and reliable reporting. We link to the evidence behind our stories wherever possible so readers can check the sources themselves.
Historical anecdotes have a bad habit of becoming cleaner and funnier every time they are repeated. If sources disagree, a detail cannot be verified, or the familiar version of a story turns out to be shakier than advertised, we say so.
We correct factual errors and update articles when the underlying facts change. The story can be funny. The sourcing still has to survive contact with reality.
Europe Is Weird also uses original editorial collage-style illustrations throughout the site. They are interpretive rather than documentary, and often use humor or exaggeration to highlight the absurdity of the stories we cover. They should not be read as photographs or evidence of the people, places, or events described unless clearly identified otherwise.
Who we are
Iris Lehmann is the founder of Europe Is Weird and writes about European history, borders, unusual economies, and the systems connecting past decisions with modern life.
Josip Zelenika is a political scientist who writes about government, institutions, public systems, and political history.