In Czechia, when a motorway leads to a destination in a neighbouring country, the destination names on the road signs are always written in the destination’s native language. This means you can see directions to e.g. Wrocław, Katowice, Wien or Dresden, even though these cities are normally refered to as Vratislav, Katovice, Vídeň and Drážďany in Czech text. This makes sense to me, as it means that the destination signs to the same city don’t suddenly change when crossing the border, and the cities’ own names are usually more familiar to non-Czech speaking drivers.

When I went on a road trip to Sweden, I was quite surprised to see that this practice isn’t universal. Germany usually has these destinations written in both German and the destination’s language (e.g. Prag/Praha), which is fair, but in Sweden, the destinations are only written in Swedish even for neighbouring destinations (the same for Denmark and Danish). This confused me for a bit, as we were driving towards the Öresund bridge and saw directions to Malmö written as Malmø, the same for directions to København from Sweden written as Köpenhamn. How is it done in your countries?

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