Estonia

Estonia is where medieval old towns meet bleeding-edge technology. This tiny Baltic nation of 1.3 million people has built the most advanced digital society on the planet - you can do almost everything online, from voting to signing contracts to starting a company in 15 minutes. Skype was invented here. The country offers e-Residency to anyone in the world. And all of this from a place that was occupied by the Soviet Union until 1991.

But Estonia isn't just about tech. Tallinn's Old Town is a gorgeously preserved medieval city straight out of a fairy tale, with cobblestone streets, Gothic spires, and city walls that date back to the 13th century. Over half the country is covered in forest, there are more than 2,200 islands, and the population is so sparse that there are genuinely more trees per person than almost anywhere else in Europe. Estonians are famously reserved - the running joke is that an extroverted Estonian looks at your shoes instead of their own - but they also have one of the strongest choral singing traditions in the world, which they literally used to win their independence.