Baarle-Nassau: Bordering Ridiculous

I love looking at Google Maps for strange things. Even as a kid, I loved flicking through pages of the world atlas, looking at how borders took strange paths to carve up the earth into different countries. I guess this fascination comes from living in Australia where we have no land borders—just a massive long coastline. I’m particularly interested in enclaves: bits of land completely surrounded by another country but owned by a different one. I visited my first enclave back in 2022 when I went to the Spanish enclave of Melilla. I flew in and out of that one, as the high border wall with Morocco makes crossing on foot a bit tricky. Today was different—I was going enclaves on steroids.

In the south of the Netherlands, close to Belgium proper, is the small town of Baarle-Nassau. Home to 22 Belgian enclaves within the Netherlands and 8 Dutch exclaves within those Belgian enclaves, it’s the world’s most densely packed little cluster of enclaves. Only 40 minutes’ drive from where I was staying, including a shortcut through Belgium proper, it was somewhere I had to see. The car seemed a little less excited about the border crossings (which are just lines on a map given the open borders within the Schengen group). "Warning—Border Crossing… Warning—Border Crossing," she would yell each time we approached one of these imaginary lines.

On the drive there, the only noticeable difference when cutting through Belgium was that the large red bike lanes that take up most of the narrow road disappeared in Belgium, only to reappear again once crossing back into the Netherlands. The drive was scenic, even for a flat country—small tree-lined lanes, green fields, and metal bollards you can only just squeeze through. Okay, the latter wasn’t great and got the car beeping a lot, but we breathed in and made it through. Arriving into the town itself, the car was going berserk with the "Warning—Border Crossing... Warning—Border Crossing" tirade as we crisscrossed the many enclave borders. On one road, the northern lane was in the Netherlands, the southern side in Belgium. Fascinating! Jude and I laughed over the ridiculous number of warnings the car gave us.

We parked in town to walk around. There isn’t really much to “see” here, other than the borders themselves. Metal dots mark out the lines, sometimes replaced by white crosses with “NL” and “B” on either side indicating which country you’re in. The first shop we saw had a border line that ran right up its wall. The entry is in the Netherlands, but inside, the store is split in half—part in Belgium, part in the Netherlands. You collect your purchases in Belgium and pay for them in the Netherlands.

We had a drink and—being in Belgium, I think—it’s hard to keep track in this town, I grabbed some waffles. They were disappointing, but oh well. Looking at some local shops afterwards, a man approached me with a camera in hand. “Are you Dutch? Visiting?” he asked. “Not Dutch, Australian visitors,” I replied. “Okay. I am from tourism office taking some pictures. Can I take photos of you?” he asked. My travel blog is obviously booming—we’re now local celebrities 😂.

We posed for a few staged pics. The first was of Rob taking a photo of me straddling the border. “Don’t look at the camera,” the guy said. “Pretend to be taking your own photos,” he added. Rob and I awkwardly laughed, not looking at him and not knowing if he was finished or not. Next, Jude and I formed a hand arch over the border and again awkwardly waited, unsure when our photoshoot was over. Maybe we weren’t quite the actors he had in mind—he thanked us for our time and didn’t ask for more shots.

Keep an eye out for new promotional materials from the town of Baarle-Nassau—we might just be the new faces of their tourism campaign. After taking a few photos of our own, we walked to the most unique house in town, crossing borders multiple times on the way. It must be strange living in one house while your neighbour’s—attached to yours—is technically in a different country and under different laws. The border runs directly through the front door of this cute little house, with a Belgian and Dutch flag on either side. I learned that the law that applies to each home depends on where its front door is. I wonder how that works in practice?

It’s a cute town to visit and soak up the craziness of these imaginary lines we call borders—but you only need an hour or so to get the full experience. Satisfied that I’d sufficiently got my nerd on, we headed off to our next stop of the day. Since I’d parked the car on the border (the back left seat technically in a different country), it immediately started warning us again the moment I turned on the engine. But the car got camera shy—just as Jude tried to film the warnings, it suddenly went silent. Truly back in the Netherlands, our trip to the densest cluster of enclaves was complete—and the car could finally relax.Okumaya devam et