From Visegrad to Mitteleuropa

IMPROVE your neighbourhood, and everybody wants to move in. Central Europe has been gentrifying so gracefully since 1989 that every country east of Strasbourg seems to claim ties there now. Austrians are rediscovering Habsburg friendships. Slovenia has turned its back on the Balkans. Ukrainians are saying that eastern Europe starts, if not east of Ukraine, then at least east of Lvov.

For long-standing locals, though, gentrification can strain the old social fabric. Central Europe used to mean the Visegrad group, which started life in 1991 as a declaration of co-operation between Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. It grew from three to four with the division of Czechoslovakia in two in 1993, and then became a mutual assistance group to push its members into NATO and the European Union.