How comparing two places works

What it compares

The time in each place and the hours you are both awake; daylight, seasons and the Moon; climate and a year of temperatures; languages, money, the working week and public holidays; forests, farmland and towns; the crops each country grows and the foods that give it the most energy; trade between the two countries; when each place was founded, the rivers and seas it sits on and its World Heritage Sites; the birds recorded in both; and, in Europe, how many guests from each country stay in the other.

How to read it

• Distances are rounded to the nearest 100 km, and no direction is given.
• "Awake" means 08:00 to 22:00 local time.
• Money uses the average exchange rate across a whole year, not today's rate.
• Every number carries its year, and every fact links to its source.
• Dates are only as exact as the record: "in the 8th century", not a made-up year.
• Birds are "recorded in" a place; a missing record never means a bird is absent.

Where it is worked out

In your own browser, from the centres of the two places and a small file about each. Nothing about which two places you compared is sent or stored. A link you share contains the two places and nothing else.

What is deliberately missing

• No score, and no "better" or "worse" place.
• No crime, poverty, wealth or development rankings.
• No borders drawn on the map, disputed or otherwise.
• No holidays that mark wars, victories or independence, which can set one place against another.
• No statistics presented as facts about the people who live somewhere.
• No live disaster or conflict feeds.