The country shares borders to the north with Albania, ex-Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and to the east with Turkey, a total length of 1,228 km.
Summers are hot and dry, winters usually mild.
Most of the rain falls in autumn and winter. Greece, the southernmost extremity of the Balkan peninsula, is a mountainous, stony country with a highly indented and crenellated coast. According to a Greek myth, when god created the world he distributed all the available soil through a sieve and when he had provided every country with enough of it he tossed the remaining stones from the sieve over his shoulder - and there was Greece. More than two thirds of the country is classified as hilly and mountainous. The Pindos range traverses the Greek mainland from N.W. to S.E. dividing it in two.