Poland is a country in
East-Central Europe with an area of 312,679 square kilometres (120,726 sq. mi.), and mostly temperate climate. Generally speaking, Poland is an almost unbroken plain reaching from the
Baltic Sea in the north, to the
Carpathian Mountains in the south. Within that plain, terrain variations run in bands east to west. The Baltic coast has two natural
harbors, the larger one in the
Gdansk-Gdynia region, and a smaller one near
Szczecin in the far northwest. The northeastern region also known as
Masurian Lake District with more than 2,000 lakes, is densely wooded, sparsely populated. To the south of the lake district, and across central Poland a vast region of plains extends all the way to the
Sudetes on the
Czech and
Slovak borders southwest, and to the
Carpathians on the Czech, Slovak and
Ukrainian borders southeast. The central lowlands had been formed by glacial erosion in the
Pleistocene ice age. The neighboring countries are Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and
Belarus to the east, and
Lithuania and the
Russian exclave of
Kaliningrad to the northeast.