North Rhine-Westphalia is the state "deep in the West" of Germany. It is located in the region between Selfkant in the West and Höxter in the East, Hellenthal in the South and Rahden in the North, and is home to some 18 million people who live on a surface area of over 34,000 square kilometres. This not only makes North Rhine-Westphalia the most populous of the 16 German states, it also means that more people live in this state than, for instance, in the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria or Switzerland.Nearly half of North Rhine-Westphalia's land area is used for agriculture, forests cover one quarter of the state's surface. Altogether, North Rhine-Westphalia has 14 nature parks, some of which it shares with other states, and one national park, the Eifel. There are 29 cities with more than 100,000 residents. The largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia is Cologne with a population of about one million while Düsseldorf is the state capital of North Rhine-Westphalia.