The Rhine is a European river that begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps, forms part of the  Swiss-Austrian, Swiss-Liechtenstein border, Swiss-German and then the Franco-German border, then flows through the Rhineland and eventually empties into the North Sea in the Netherlands. It is the second-longest river in Central and Western Europe (after the Danube), at about , with an average discharge of about .