A few days ago, we visited the villages of Baarle-Hertog (Belgium) and Baarle-Nassau (The Netherlands). I tweeted a short thread about it that you can see below:
Briefly:
- The village is divided between Belgian and Dutch exclaves in a very intricate border, including several exclaves which are no more than a few houses or a farm. The Belgian part of the village itself is an exclave in The Netherlands, a few kilometres from the border (such as Llivia from Spain within France, or Treviño of Castile within the Basque country in Spain).
- The borders were defined in the Maastricht Treaty in 1843. In 1995 a commission clarified the borders.
- There are marks in the ground that show where the border goes, indicating which side belongs to which country. The panels of the streets or the numbering of the houses also help you to locate where you are.
- There is a bike route which takes you through the different border lines.
Once I tweeted that thread, the beauty of Twitter made it that a friend, Miguel, referred me to a series of posts about that village written by the blogger Diego González who hosts a blog about borders.
On top of that, I had taken the idea to visit that village from yet another retweet from another friend, Pablo.
You can see in that tweet below the different posts (in Spanish).
The Blog by Javier 