Undiscovered Journeys

Netherlands - The world's craziest border

by Mike Levy

The world’s craziest border. Normally an international border is pretty easy to define – a river here or a parallel there. Not so in Baarle-Nassau, a small town in (kind of) Netherlands but fractured into 22 non-contiguous enclaves actually belonging to Belgium. It means that wherever you go there is an international border where Holland and Belgium are totally jumbled up – down the middle of café, across a filling station or straight through a house. It has to be the most crazy demarcation in the world. Anyone been - and did you know which country you were in?