[bluetomcat]

The hard ones for me were countries in mainland Africa, island nations in the Atlantic and the Pacific, and small adjacent countries that you associate in a group – say Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, or Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan.

[LfLxfxxLxfxx]

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are easy - they go in alphabetical order from north to south.

[Tainnor]

Also, Estonia is closest to Finland, which makes sense since the languages are close.

[130e13a]

and it makes sense that lithuania is the bottom one (ie, closest to poland), since there used to be a polish lithuanian commonwealth

[reducesuffering]

Also Lat-via as in lateral makes me think of it in the middle.

[baryphonic]

For the 'stans, I remember TUTK (west to east), and that Turkmenistan is closest to Turkey.

[mason55]

The other way to remember is, if you can remember that Kazakhstan is the biggest, then it goes alphabetically clockwise.

Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan