Germany

Germany is the engine of Europe - literally. The country that invented the automobile, the printing press, and aspirin also happens to be the EU's largest economy and most populous nation. It's a place of contradictions: rigidly efficient but deeply philosophical, famous for strict rules but also for world-class partying. Berlin has more museums than rainy days, Munich has Oktoberfest, and the Black Forest looks exactly like you'd imagine from a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.

But Germany is also a country that confronts its history more honestly than almost any other nation. The Berlin Wall, the Holocaust memorials, the divided-and-reunified capital - it's all there, not hidden but built into the fabric of daily life. Beyond the big cities, there are medieval towns along the Rhine, castles that inspired Disney, a car culture that gave us the Autobahn (no speed limit, seriously), and a beer tradition so refined that the purity law for brewing dates back to 1516. Germans work hard, recycle obsessively, and get six weeks of vacation. Not a bad deal.