No Tiptoeing Involved

Hallo from Belgium! You might think I should say Bonjour from Belgium. But Alrica and I are staying in the Flemish part of Belgium where the language spoken is Dutch.

My beauty in the midst of tulip beauty

We are doing something with which we are very familiar, and also something with which we are out of practice in doing: taking a road trip. On Thursday, we flew from Tunis into Paris. We rented a car at the airport and we are driving around the Benelux area of Europe. (Benelux is a mashup of three words, or to speak non-technically, a threewordsmash.) It is the region of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

The yellow is so bright you almost don't notice the red

At present, we are in Belgium. We are staying in a very adorable town called Mortsel, just outside of Antwerp. It has castles, lots of old-world architecture, and some tasty Belgian fries.

Pink and white, like Neapolitan ice cream after you've eaten all the chocolate

Yesterday, we took a day trip into the Netherlands to fulfill a lifelong (in truth, monthlong) dream (which is probably a stronger word than is called for here, “fancy” might be a more accurate description) to see the tulips. The Netherlands is famous for its tulip season where you can drive around and find fields of tulips in so many colors. We were worried that we might be too late. It generally runs from Mid-April to early May. It turns out, this year we were, if anything, too early. But really, we were in plenty of time.

Check this out: Orange on the outside, yellow on the inside

While some of the tulip fields we saw were entirely green, no blossoms yet, we still saw plenty of tulips in a variety of colors: The yellows were super bright, hard to miss. The reds came in varieties with white tops or yellow tops. There were orange tulips which were orange through and through, and others which were red-orange on the outside and yellow inside. We also saw purples and pinks.

You so want to tiptoe through them. Admit it.

We went up to Noordoostpolder, which is a region northeast of Amsterdam. We had read it can be very crowded with people in tulip season, but for us it wasn’t. We did see other people, but usually just a handful at some of the fields where we stopped.

Free sporks! Is this heaven? No, it's the Netherlands.

Check out this picture: Apparently the Dutch word for a spork is “spork”. Except that really isn’t a spork, it isn’t a mix of spoon and fork. It’s really a wooden fork with a knife edge on one of the tines. I like the name “knork” for this one. I suppose “forfe” is another choice though, but I like the beginning with a non-sounding k—sometimes called silent— and ending with a k-sounding k—sometimes called nonsilent or insilent or insolent. (Yes, I made that last part up.)

From the tulips we headed south and visited a geographic oddity: We visited the interwoven towns of Baarle-Nassau and Baarle-Hertog. But first a few terms.

An enclave is a country or a piece of a country that is entirely surrounded by another country. For example, Lesotho is an enclave, a country entirely surrounded by South Africa. Both Vatican City and San Marino are enclaves entirely inside Italy. But an enclave doesn’t have to be an independent country. It could be a territory of another country. Think of West Berlin in the days of the Cold War, which was entirely inside East Germany, even though it was a piece of West Germany.

An exclave is a territory belonging to one country but separated from that country, surrounded by other countries. (Generally surrounded by land, not by water. So Alaska isn’t an exclave because while it is disconnected from the United States, it isn’t entirely surrounded by other countries. It has a lot of coast.)

Many exclaves are also enclaves. They are surrounded entirely by land belonging to one other country. Not all of them are. For example, there is a piece of territory owned by Azerbaijan called Nakhchivan which is separated from the main part of the country. It is surrounded by land belonging to three different nations: Armenia, Iran, and Turkey. So it is an exclave which is not an enclave.

But it is easier to find examples of exclaves which are also enclaves. That’s where I’m going with this. But one more term: A counter-exclave is a piece of territory belonging to country X which is entirely surrounded by a piece of territory belonging to country Y which is in turn surrounded entirely by country X again. This is also called a second-order exclave.

You could also go into counter-counter-exclaves (or third-order exclaves) and on and on. But for this discussion, we only need a single “counter” (or a second-order exclave.)

You see, Baarle-Hertog is Belgium. But it is entirely inside the Netherlands (in the city of Baarle-Nassau.) So, Baarle-Hertog is an exclave. Or in truth, it is 22 separate exclaves. There are 22 disconnected pieces of land in southern Netherlands which are part of Belgium.

What’s more, there are holes inside those exclaves that are pieces of the Netherlands inside pieces of Belgium inside pieces of the Netherlands. These are counter-exclaves. There are 10 of these. Twenty-two pieces with ten pieces inside. A border mess!

And yet, the people there don’t seem to worry much about it. It is a lovely town, or two towns, to visit. This whole complication dates back to the Middle Ages when one nobleman gave up some land to another nobleman in exchange for protection. Every source I’ve found just describes it as protection. I’m guessing this is more military alliance than racketeering, but I can’t say that for sure.

It wasn’t a big deal for a long time. Even in the modern era, it was all the Netherlands, because Belgium wasn’t a thing. Okay, it was a thing, but not its own country. Belgium was part of the Netherlands and only became independent in 1831. It left behind such a mess in the region, that they didn’t get around to figuring out exactly what pieces of land were which. For a while. A long while. I wonder what they did before they all used the same currency.

Today, the borders are marked with plus signs along the sidewalks, though this was not all laid out and done until 1995. So they had a good 164 years of not really know which piece of land belonged to which country. Now the borders often run through buildings, so they have a front door rule. If your front door is in Belgium, you are Belgian. (You vote in Belgian elections and pay taxes to Belgium.) If your front door is in the Netherlands, you are Dutch. (Elections, taxes, blah, blah, blah.) If the border runs through your front door (which is rare, but it happens), you get to choose. (Luckily, you don’t have to pay taxes to both, but unluckily, you don’t get two votes.)

You need to know which jurisdiction you are breaking the law in!

When we visited, it was clear the locals just don’t care very much. They are out eating in cafes, not worrying about which country is which. Though, the number plates for the addresses either have the Belgian colors on them or the Dutch colors. They do want you to know which country each building is in.

I labeled the essential details

It did cause some stress during COVID-19. The Netherlands and Belgium had very different mask mandates. There were situations in which you entered a shop required to be masked, but then walking to the merchandise in the back of the shop you could take your mask off. You had crossed an international border.

For us it was a beautiful walk on a clement day in a charming medieval town with some very pretty towers. One of them had bells which played songs. The first we heard was Down by the Riverside. I didn’t recognize the second.

Beautiful music and a pretty tower? Too much.

This day trip makes the Netherlands the third country we have visited but not slept in. (The first was Vatican City, and I think you would need a special invitation to sleep there. The second was Slovakia when we visited its capitol, Bratislava, in a day trip from Vienna.) But maybe I should have set up a tent on the plus signs and managed to sleep in two countries at the same time. I’ve never done that before! A new lifelong dream! (Or seconds-long passing thought.)