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Two British men have set out to row the entire length of the Danube - all 2888 kilometres of it.... Insight Central Europe caught up with rower Charlie Blair, as he made a brief stop in the Hungarian capital.

The huge Gabcikovo dam on the Slovak stretch of the river was launched in 1992. At the time environmentalists warned of devastating damage and said poor construction posed a danger for people living nearby. So 10 years later, has the controversy died down? And what's been the impact on the local people?

Every year, flocks of cranes, geese and swans fly to the Netherlands and Germany, using migration corridors along the Lower Notec river valley, which cuts across mid-western Poland. A wind power farm is planned for this valley. It's an eco-friendly scheme to generate clean power for the region. But ecologists are up in arms saying the massive structures are fatal for the migrating birds.

This week the Czech Republic and Slovakia have been marking the 35th anniversary of the 1968 invasion by Soviet-led armies of the Warsaw Pact. The invasion crushed the liberal reforms known as the Prague Spring. Slovak photographer Ladislav Bielik received the 1969 World Press Photo award for his documentary series about the invasion. His photo of a screaming man baring his naked chest to a tank gun is included in the world press agency's 100 most prestigious pictures of the 20th century. But little is known about the man whose pictures of the

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has rejected plans for a Berlin-based memorial to the ethnic Germans expelled from central and eastern European countries after world war two. He fears Germany's own wartime excesses could be glossed over. A petition for the centre has been launched by the private "Federation for Expellees" to create a memorial for the estimated 12 and a half million ethnic Germans who were expelled from their homes in present-day Poland, the Czech Republic and other Eastern countries. Why shouldn't it be built in Berlin? Dr

The 3rd in our series on Central Europe's borders. This week Katy Duke heads to the east of Austria for some cross border shopping.

The 11 official languages of the European Union already make for quite a mouthful, but when a fresh batch of members states joins the EU next year - it will cost European taxpayers 1 billion euros a year just to translate all the speeches and official texts from Brussels. BUT, it also means better job prospects for translators from the candidate countries

Czechoslovakia was once home to three million ethnic Germans - known as Sudeten Germans - and the post-war expulsions remain a sore point with Austria and Germany. As one might expect, there is little understanding for a Berlin memorial in the Czech Republic - even the strongest advocates of Czech-German reconciliation say the proposal is just too contentious.

When Slovenia and Croatia were part of Yugoslavia, internal borders didn't matter much. But now eight years after their independence, Croatia and Slovenia are still trying to work out where their border should lie. And now Croatia says it wants to create an exclusive economic zone in the eastern part of the Adriatic - a proposal not welcomed by the Slovenian government

Austria last suffered catastrophic floods in 1959. As a result flood barriers and dams were built to keep the waters out of built up areas. And it can be argued that in the case of Vienna - it worked. But why was there such havoc elsewhere? The World Wildlife Fund's water expert Ulrich Eichelmann says many of the problems are manmade