described officially as (Reichstag, seat of the Bundestag). As seen in this example, the term "Bund" (federation) has replaced "Reich" in the names of various state institutions such as the army ("Bundeswehr"). The term "Reichstag" also remains in use in the German language as the term for the parliaments of some foreign monarchies, such as Sweden's Riksdag and Japan's pre-war Imperial Diet. Limited usage in the railway system of the German Democratic Republic The exception is that during the Cold War, the East German railway incongruously continued to use the name Deutsche Reichsbahn (German Reich Railways), which had been the name of the national railway during the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era. Even after German reunification in October 1990, the Reichsbahn continued to exist for over three years as the operator of the railroad in eastern Germany, ending finally on 1 January 1994 when the Reichsbahn and the western Deutsche Bundesbahn were merged to form the privatized Deutsche Bahn AG. Usage in related languages In Scandinavian languages The cognate of the word Reich is used in all the Scandinavian languages with the identical meaning, i.e. "realm". It is spelled in Danish and older Norwegian (before the 1907 spelling reform) and in Swedish and modern Norwegian. The word is traditionally used for sovereign entities, generally simply means "country" or "nation" (in the sense of a sovereign state) and does not have any special or political connotations. It does not imply any particular form of government, but it does imply that the entity is both of a certain size and of a certain standing, like the Scandinavian kingdoms themselves; hence the word might be considered exaggerated for very small states, like a city-state. Its use as a stand-alone word is more widespread than in contemporary German, but most often it refers to the three Scandinavian states themselves and certain historical empires, like the Roman Empire; the standard word for a "country" is usually land and there are many other words used to refer to countries. The word is part of the official names of Denmark, Norway and Sweden in the form of , , and , all meaning kingdom, or literally the "realm of a king" (a kingdom can also be called in Danish and Norwegian and or in Swedish, direct cognates of the English word). Two regions in Norway that were petty kingdoms before the unification of Norway around 900