In Spike Milligan's excellent absudist book, Puckoon - the border separating two local Irish constituencies runs straight through the middle of the local pub. At one end of the pub the Guinness is cheaper than at the other end of the bar, which falls under another jurisdiction. Everyone naturally crowds down one end of the pub!
Amazingly, this wonderfully Milligan-esque scenario is not that far from fact - take the little town of Baarle, for instance, which straddles the Dutch-Belgian border. The Belgian portion of town, known as Baarle Hertog, is no more than as a smattering of tiny exclaves inside of the Netherlands town of Baarle-Nassau.
The official border between Belgium and the Netherlands runs through living rooms, yards and cafés, so it’s possible – indeed, it happens more often than you’d think – to sit across a table having a cup of coffee with someone who is actually in a different country.
For a while, a Dutch law requiring dining establishments to close earlier than they did in Belgium laid the foundation for an absurd, nightly charade in some Baarle restaurants. At closing time in the Netherlands, patrons would have to get up and move tables, over to the Belgian side. Baarle’s complex borderline has to do with how regional lords and dukes divided up their land hundreds of years ago.
RIP Spike.
