"I really want to see the Tatras," said Aistė Černauskytė, a political science student from Lithuania, after having laid her eyes on the landscape of Slovakia during her bus trip to Bratislava. Aistė is one of the international students who arrived to spend a semester in Bratislava. She spent 21 hours on the bus from Vilnius, across Poland, right to the Slovak capital. "Central Europe isn't very well-known to me," says Aistė Černauskytė, who appreciates the strategically good location of Bratislava for traveling.

Known as Selfie Diplomacy, the use of social media to manage national images is now routinely practiced by foreign ministries around the world. [...] Through an array of social media profiles, the Polish foreign ministry is attempting to narrate Poland's role in Nazi atrocities during World War II. 

With the election in Germany bringing immigration to the fore, the NPR podcast Rough Translation visits an improv class where new arrivals learn the unwritten rules of German culture. 

This week, Scouts of Syria will become an official member of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, while Arabic could become the organization’s fourth official language – following English, French and Spanish.

With the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics less than five months away, South Korea is accelerating its public diplomacy to promote the South Korea-hosted international sports event where the cultural allure of Korea could be illuminated globally. [...] The ministry is utilizing its 182 overseas diplomatic missions to reach out to the world to promote the sports games.

Bhutan was never going to be an early adopter. It is a small and remote place — a little more than twice the size of Los Angeles and Orange counties combined, perched at the eastern edge of the world’s highest mountain range. The Buddhist constitutional monarchy, however, is steadily moving into the modern era, even as its 800,000 people struggle with how much of it to embrace.

‘Incredible India’ is easier said than done. It’s time the Modi government took concrete steps to harness and exploit our rich heritage...In the new millennium, various governments and leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi have talked about India’s soft power. Yet, we have never really harnessed this strength.