The arrow pointing up shows approximately where Baarle-Hertog is, the arrow pointing right shows approximately where Maastricht is.

When I first looked at a map of where Maastricht, the town I’m studying at, is located I was kind of puzzled about why it was part of The Netherlands. The image on the right shows where Maastricht is, the arrow on the bottom. When you look at the area it’s in you can see that it’s only connected by a very thin strip. The explanation according to Wikipedia is:

When the southern provinces sought independence from the North to form Belgium in 1830, the garrison in Maastricht remained loyal to the Dutch king, though the surrounding countryside came under Belgian control. Arbitration by the Great Powersin 1831 awarded the city and the eastern part of Limburg, despite being geographically and culturally closer to Belgium, to the Netherlands and the rest to Belgium.

I thought this was pretty interesting, It almost seems like a portion of The Netherlands being within Belgium.

On BLDGBLOG today (via Kottke) I found an even more interesting case; The city of Baarle-Hertog, which is indicated by the other arrow. It’s 5 Kilometers away from the main border of Belgium and is where no definite decision could be made on the border so “5732 parcels of land had their nationality laid down separately.” (BLDG BLOG has an awesome diagram of some of the parcels.) But the most fascinating is that some houses and businesses are split over two different nationalities.  At one point The Netherlands had laws requiring restaurants to close by a certain time, so the ones in Baarle-Hertog would shift their tables to the Belgian side of the store to keep business going. There are various markers about the town to show where the puzzle-like border is: Pavers along the side walk have lines to show the divisions and most of the building entrances also have little flags to indicate which country they stand in. 

Coming mainly from Australia I find these sorts of border problems fascinating. They bring to mind questions about nationalism and definitions of countries.  My home country is “girt by sea” (as we say in the national anthem), which makes things a little more obvious; If you’re on the mainland you’re in Australia. Well, There are a few exceptions.