Flip a map of Europe around so that Spain and Portugal are at the top and Russia at the bottom, and a surprising left-right symmetry emerges: Italy corresponds to Britain; Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily to Ireland; the Adriatic to the North Sea; Greece to Denmark; Turkey to Norway and Sweden; and the Black Sea to the Baltic. The Balkans are a leftward bulge that has no rightward correlate, but hey, nothing’s perfect.
