Baarle

“Hi, why don’t you come over to Belgian side of the bar”. I overheard this sentence a few years back in a small town. Was the speaker joking? His tone was serious enough.

For quite sometime I have been trying to come up with a way to explain this weird town on this earth which I visited a few years back. It is something like ‘a child belonging to two mothers’. And none of them is a step mother.

Okay, let’s try.

Baarle.

It is a Dutch town in the Netherlands. But it is also a Dutch town in Belgium.
It is a Belgian town in Belgium and is also a Belgian town in the Netherlands.

I hope you are not confused as yet. 😀
Some more ?

Baarle-Hertog Vs Baarle-Nassau

Okay.
It is a piece of Belgian land completely encircled by Netherlands and vice versa.