North Rhine-Westphalia

From Researching Virtual Initiatives in Education

North Rhine-Westphalia (German:Nordrhein-Westfalen) is one of the 16 states of Germany.

Its population is just over 18 million and its capital is Düsseldorf but the largest city is Cologne.

Other major cities are Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg, Oberhausen, Aachen, Bielefeld, Bonn, Bochum, Bottrop, Bergisch Gladbach, Mönchengladbach, Mülheim, Münster, Gelsenkirchen, Krefeld, Hagen, Hamm, Herne, Iserlohn, Leverkusen, Neuss, Paderborn, Recklinghausen, Remscheid, Siegen, Solingen, Witten, and Wuppertal.

It is the westernmost, the most populous, and the most economically powerful state of Germany.

North Rhine-Westphalia is situated in the western part of Germany and shares borders with Belgium in the southwest and the Netherlands in the west and northwest. It has borders with the German states of Lower Saxony to the north and northeast, Rhineland-Palatinate to the south and Hesse to the southeast.

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