Most of the town of Baarle-Hertog is in Belgium but some spots are in the Netherlands, sprinkled into the Belgian majority like chocolate chips, not divided neatly by a line.
The border is so complicated that there are some houses that are
divided between the two countries. There was a time when according to
Dutch laws restaurants had to close earlier. For some restaurants on
the border it meant that the clients simply had to change their tables
to the Belgian side.
The link is from Jason Kottke.
I once drank in a pub on the Lancs / Yorks border, where the border actually ran through the middle, and there was a door in each county. The claim — I never witnessed this — was that the pub used this to stay open past closing time. Should the police from one county show up at the door, the patrons would just move to the other side.
This kind of stuff happens at borders all the time. There’s a town like this on the Canadian border – Rock Island, VT maybe – where the library is part in Canada and part in the US. I never understood why they don’t just work out a deal to make the border make more sense. Maybe it’s a tourist thing.
I think it’s more respectful to link to the actual source of the article:
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/baarle-hertog.html
Kottke get’s enough free publicity as it is.
And here’s a restaurant that straddles the border between Slovenia and Croatia: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2987376.stm.
The cash till is on the Slovenian side of the border, so the company has to be registered in Slovenia.
Interesting that both Flemish and Dutch cultures might loosely fit within the Wittfogel framework of “hydraulic civilizations” — and that Baarle-Hertog is right at the water’s edge.
Part of the background of Spike Milligan’s novel “Puckoon” revolves around a village in Ireland being half one side of the Eire/N. Ireland border and part the other. The line goes right through the pub and the two countries had different opening hours.
Very amusing novel if you manage to find a copy.
whoops, sorry, wrong thread.
A similar, but not as extreme situation is in the Vermont town is Derby Line and the Quebec town of Stanstead. The border goes through the library. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derby_Line,_Vermont) Sometime in the 1970s there was a legal case that was held in the library on the border.
Is it realistic?
It is enlightening!
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