ABSTRACT
The Federal Republic of Germany consists of 16 Bundesländer (federal states). Among them are larger states like Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia; smaller states like Saxony and Saarland; the city states of Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg; and nine others: Baden-Wuerttemberg, Brandenburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, RhinelandPalatinate, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, and Thuringia, The country has a population of 82.5 million. Germany, located between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea in the north and the Alps in the south, borders on nine neighboring states.
