Hugh's Border Blog

The Balkans - 6 - Romania to Serbia

2008-11-14T17:18:00.010-05:00

The final leg on my short (in time, if not in distance - 2400km in all) Balkans tour was to take me from the bridge crossing at Ruse in Bulgaria into Romania and thence to cross back over the Danube into Serbia at Drobeta Turnu Severin. I had intended to visit the BGRORS tripoint marker on the Romanian bank of the Danube on the way but the lateness of the hour, a traffic jam on the Bucharest ring road and the early sunset in November sadly precluded that. Maybe another day.

When I got to Drobeta-Turnu Severin I was perplexed because I didn't realise just how far north of the town the bridge across the Danube lay. This is not really a bridge actually - really it is a dam. Anyway, I had seen no signs to "Serbia" and so had started to make plans to drive further north in Romania when suddenly the crossing appeared. It was so poorly marked that, in the dark and the rain, I missed the turning, went past it, and had to turn around to find the entrance. All this despite having Garmin GPS maps of both countries on my laptop connected to a GPS - but the crossing was not shown on either of them!!

The following video shows my journey across the river - this was not the best quality as the autofocus kept thinking it should focus on the raindrops on my windscreen rather than the outside objects - and the rain and dark made it not especially clear - but it is the best I could do.

After that it was simply a matter of driving about 2½ more hours to Belgrade, finding my hotel, and checking in to relax before flying to London the next day.

So that is the end of my short Balkans tour - There are just 4 more countries in the region for me to visit (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania and Macedonia-FYROM), or 5 if you include Kosovo (which I shall eschew for a while until things are a bit safer there - plus I don't want to get into the politics of whether it really is a county or not either). Additionally, once I have visited those, Moldova and Monaco I shall have set foot in every European country on the continental mainland. (I'm choosing not to count Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan as "Europe" despite their transcontinental nature if you have a certain opinion of where the border of Europe lies).

This tour took me to 2 new countries for me - 5 new borders - and added 5 more countries to my list of where I have found geocaches (bringing that total to 42).

Still lots more borders to cross and areas to spend more time investigating - so more blogging WILL follow for my subsequent trips.

The Balkans - 5 - Bulgaria to Romania

2008-11-07T14:00:00.001-05:00

Crossing the Danube from Bulgaria to Romania needs a ferry if you are going to do it anywhere west of Rousse (variously spelled Ruse, Russe according to roadsigns I witnessed on the way there - it is, after all, consistently spelled Pyce in the Cyrillic alphabet so the Roman alphabet spellings are simply phonetic). So I chose to take the bridge as you can see in the video below. This brings you out south of Bucharest.

It was a fairly uneventful crossing and went very quickly, which was a welcome change after my experiences in Turkey, especially as I had a long drive ahead of me to Belgrade.

The Balkans - 4 - Turkey to Bulgaria

2008-11-06T21:00:00.004-05:00

Distances are longer than they seem on the map sometimes. After my visit to Gallipolli I drove to the Turkey Bulgaria border just west of Edirne in Turkey. This involved a short distance of toll road and I had no Turkish money and they didn't take credit cards. This presented a small problem but the toll collector indicated I could pay him one Euro. However I only had 50 Euro notes in that currency so it looked like I was going to have a problem. But then he said "One Dollar" - and having some US dollars in my wallet I was through (saving some expense compared to the Euro price in the bargain).

It was dark when I reached the border and for some reason I did not run the camera as I went through so there is no video - sorry. I had originally intended to see if I could arrange to visit the BGGRTR tripoint but my e-mail to the Turkish officials had gone unanswered and it was very late and dark anyway so I had to forego that pleasure.

The Turkish side of the border crossing is undergoing major construction work and is pretty chaotic, with few signs to indicate just where you should go and many unpaved roads, uncompleted buildings and so on.

The final check on the Turkish side was to examine the vehicle's papers and there was a (mercifully short) line there - but, even so, each car took about 4 to 5 minutes to be processed and that meant it took me over an hour to get through even this short line. It seems amazing that there was only one person checking these papers.

Once across the bridge into Bulgaria I had a repeat of the process I went through crossing from Serbia (with the "chip" and so on).

Then it was off to Romania and the last couple of legs of my tour.

The Balkans - 3 - Greece to Turkey

2008-11-06T16:00:00.003-05:00

Having crossed from Bulgaria into Greece I drove down the eastern border of Greece to the crossing into Turkey near Ipsala, Turkey.

First of all, however, I made a small detour near the Bulgaria/Turkey/Greece tripiont into the Greek village of Kastanies which has a border crossing with Turkey. I think this is the only land (as in not even across a river) border crossing between the two countries. I did not want to enter Turkey at this point as I had a mission to find a geocache in Greece first - but I did check out the border post on the Greek side as you can see in the following video.

The actual crossing into Turkey, however, was another story. As you can see from the following video, the Greek authorities were concerned about my camera as well as the documents for the car. The car being registered in Serbia, and being a rental, they wanted to check that it was permitted to take it into Turkey before they would let me through. Although the insurance documents were in order there was no annotation in the rental contract about taking it into any other country. Fortunately I eventually remembered that I had a paper copy of the original booking off the internet and that explicitly stated that I was allowed to take the car into both Greece and Turkey and that satisfied them. As for my camera, they wanted to check that I had not taken any video of "prohibited" places in Greece (although how I was supposed to know that an particular place was "prohibited" I don't know). They spent some time looking at the video footage I had taken and eventually seemed content to let me proceed, asking me not to video the area between the inspection post and the border. You can see the result in the video below. For a fuller video of the actual border crossing I have found this one on YouTube which may be of interest.

Once I reached the Turkish side it was a matter of a lot of stops, my failure to understand the instructions being given in virtually non-existent English about where to go to buy a tourist visa, all of which combined with the delays on the Greek side to make this border crossing take about 2 hours. Sadly this meant that I arrived at the Anzac memorial to Gallipolli just after sunset (1715 at this time of year) which lessed the impact of that most interesting place.

The Balkans - 2 - Bulgaria to Greece

2008-11-06T13:00:00.001-05:00

Stage 2 on my Balkans tour was to cross the Bulgaria-Greece border at its eastern end by driving along the E85 between the two countries. This was fairly straightforward and I did not even have to show my passport at the Greek border as can be seen from the following video

The Balkans - 1 - Serbia to Bulgaria

2008-11-05T23:00:00.005-05:00

Before some meetings in London next week I have the opportunity to visit the Balkans for a couple of days. I planned my visit so that I could cross as many borders, visit as many (new for me) countries, and find as many geocaches in as many (new for me) countries as possible. The main region of Europe that I have never visited lay in the southeast, the Balkans.

While planning my trip one consideration was to find somewhere that I could rent a car that I would be allowed to drive into other countries. At first I had considered flying to Bucharest but rentals from Romania cannot be driven into the former Yugoslavia or (I think) Turkey. Rentals from Bulgaria or Greece could not be driven into any other country. However rentals from Serbia and Macedonia were less restrictive. Macedonian rentals could not be driven to Bulgaria or Turkey but could go to Greece, Albania and the rest of the former Yugoslavia. Rentals from Serbia could not be driven to Macedonia or Albania but could go to Bulgaria and (it appeared) to Turkey. So I elected to fly to Belgrade and start my adventure from there.

Because of the time differences and flight schedules it was going to be a tight timeline - my flight would not arrive in Belgrade until 15:50 having left Canada the night before (changing in Frankfurt) and sunset was shortly after 16:00. I planned to drive to Sofia, Bulgaria on arrival and the border crossing would also take me into another timezone where I would lose yet another hour. Naturally Lufthansa managed to lose my suitcase which then meant that I was further delayed by almost 2 hours at Belgrade airport sorting that out - and they would not deliver the case outside Serbia so I had to arrange for them to deliver it to the hotel in Belgrade that I would be staying in on my eventual return there. I had to live without it for a couple of days. Fortunately I always pack the essentials in my carry-on including all my navigation equipment (computers, GPS etc.) so my only discomfort was not having a change of clothes and not having the nice computer stand that I could install in the rental car to make the navigation computer more accessible (I therefore had to operate it as it sat on the passenger seat).

Driving to Bulgaria is mostly Motorway - the following two videos were shot from my dash mounted camera as I went through the various checkpoints at the border.

I found it fairly confusing at first figuring out whether I had left Serbia or not - some borders have the check points from both countries together and I had thought that might have been the case here - you will notice my confusion on the video.

Then the process of entering Bulgaria was interesting. There were numerous stops - customs, passport control, purchase local currency, vehicle document checking, purchase vignette to allow driving on the main Bulgarian roads and finally payment of all necessary charges. To follow you through all this they give you a USB stick at the first checkpoint that is referred to as a "chip" at each subsequent one and you are expected to hand this to the agent at each of the points as you go through for them to update. I was very tempted to pop it into my computer, which was on the seat beside me running my GPS, to see what was on it. However, by the time I had thought of doing so it was too late and I was at the final check point.

So, here are the videos:

Part 1 (9 min 52 secs)

Part 2 (5 min 14 secs)

Suderwick - Dinxperlo

2008-08-15T12:18:00.009-04:00

A short visit to the Dutch-German Border divided town of Dinxperlo/Suderwick. Here is a brief video (in 2 parts because of the YouTube limitation to 10 minutes per video) of my drive through this town - not as large as Kerkrade-Herzogenrath but similar in that the border runs down the middle of the street. I was alerted to this place by someone who had viewed my Kerkrade-Herzogenrath video on YouTube.

Suderwick/Dinxperlo are situated as shown in the map below:

The video starts at point 1 in the map below, proceeds to point 2 where I turn around and drive to point 3, where I turn around again and return to point 1.

Part 1 (5 min 50 sec)

Part 2 (6 min 37 sec)

BEFRLU

2008-05-10T12:00:00.013-04:00

Heading back to Brussels after staying the night in Luxembourg I first explored a rather interesting open mining area that had been turned back into a nature reserve and then went to explore the BEFRLU tripoint. There is apparently a new border marker on the LU side. This is a rather ugly place compared with the beauty of the BEDELU spot. The following 2 videos include my approach, visiting the tripoint itself, and driving completely around it. Being a wet tripoint it is not practical to do the 3 country run so I thought this was the next best thing.

Here first is the Google map of the area.

View Larger Map

The first video starts with me coming from LU along the E44 (LU 5), turning north onto the 51 which becomes the 804 on entering BE. I go round the roundabout and back to the tripoint.

The higher quality version is on YouTube

On leaving the tripoint I go south on the 51, east on the E44, enter FR and then turn north onto the N18, up to the roundabout and then east onto the d46b back to the earlier roundabout which again I go right around and exit back westwards.

The higher quality version is on YouTube

This is the last entry in my blog for this trip.

Luxembourg

2008-05-09T18:30:00.005-04:00

Northernmost point in Luxembourg and on to the Lancaster Memorial.

Here is a google map of the northernmost point.

View Larger Map

And of the Lancaster Memorial:

View Larger Map

For a higher quality version see the YouTube page hosting this video

Next, on to the BEDELU tripoint/tri-line

For a higher quality version see the YouTube page hosting this video

Vennbahn - L106 to Mützenich to Kalterherberg, Ruitzhof Enclave

2008-05-09T12:30:00.006-04:00

Leaving the Aderich area I drove along the L106 through Mützenich to Kalterherberg and then into the Ruitzhof enclave. I have had to divide this video into two because of the YouTube 10 minute time limit.

Part One (Hosted at You Tube Here):

Part Two (Hosted at YouTube here):

Unfortunately one feature of my camera that I had not realised about is the "drop protection" that turns it off when it thinks it is being dropped. Because it writes the video image directly to a hard drive, this is to protect the disk. When I started to drive over the rough track at the end of the Ruitzhof enclave, the bouncing made it think it was being dropped and so it turned itself off. Sadly I didn't notice this until a long time afterwards so there was no video of the return journey recorded.

Aderich and the L106

2008-05-09T11:30:00.004-04:00

Next I drove past the "German Farm" (Rückschlag), through Aderich and took the opportunity to take a much closer look at the L106 where it goes through Belgium - marked on the maps here as "Where is the border?"

German map:

Belgian map:

It was interesting to notice that the roadside markers in the section of road that appears to run through Belgium were identical (German) design to those clearly in Germany, but the distances marked on them appeared to be measured from where the border crosses the road, as shown on the German map above.

Here is the video of my drive through this area.

To see this in higher resolution visit the YouTube page where it is hosted.

B258-Fringshaus-Konzen

2008-05-09T11:15:00.000-04:00

After leaving Roetgen I dorve down the B258 towards Konzen, stopping at the side of the road (in Germany) briefly to find a geocache a few meters into the woods on the right hand side (in Belgium - the border runs alonside the road here). This video starts from where I had stopped, takes you past the Fringshaus, along the "German road in Belgium" and (after missing the turn and having to turn around) ends at the turn off for Aderich (where the "German Farm" - Rückschlag is).

To see this in higher resolution visit the YouTube page where it is hosted.

Vennbahn - Roetgen Station

2008-05-09T11:00:00.005-04:00

Last time I visited the Belgian/Gernam border area I spent quite a lot of time investigating the Vennbahn but I failed to stop at Roetgen Station. The borders around here are particularly confusing so on this trip I took the opportunity to wander around a bit and record some video of the area.

The station is just north of Mühlenstraße on the map below (reproduced from the blog of my previous visit)

The exact border lines on the road are not clear at all but some of the signs on the buildings give some idea of where they might lie.

To see this video in better quality visit the YouTube page where it is hosted.

Aachen-Vaals-BEDENL

2008-05-09T10:00:00.002-04:00

Following my investigation of Kerkrade-Herzogenrath I drove a short way south to where the German town of Aachen and the Dutch town of Vaals meet at the international border. After finding a geocache (Westwall Bunkercache "MG-Schild Wachtelkopf") near an old German bunker which was right across the road from the DENL border (just north of Vaals, on Senserbachweg), I drove through the outskirts of Aachen and the town of Vaals and then on to the BEDENL tripoint. Here is some video of parts of that trip.

Again, I hope this gives you a bit of a flavour of this part of my trip.

To see this in higher resolution you will need to visit the YouTube page where it is hosted.

Next stop - a few places on the Vennbahn and the BEDE border area as I head south towards Luxembourg.

Kerkrade-Herzogenrath Revisited

2008-05-09T09:30:00.006-04:00

After my conference in Eindhoven, Netherlands was over I decided to revisit a few border places I had been before, as well as a few new ones, on my drive to Luxembourg. Since my previous visit to the region I had acquired a dashboard mount for my video camera (called a Sticky Pod) and this was my first chance to try it out "in the field". I decided to drive up and down the divided road in these two towns, taking video as I went, and providing some commentary as well. I hope that this will provide an even better idea of the place than I was able to with just still photos from my previous trip

If you want to see this in higher quality you will have to go to where it is hosted on the YouTube site

Peter Smaardijk has kindly provided me a couple of links that address some of the questions I raise in the video about what this street used to look like. (For copyright reasons the images displayed here are displayed from the website on which they resided when this log entry was created, i.e. they have not been copied. If they are removed from that website they will not appear here properly).

First the Gemeente Kerkrade page has the following 3 pictures on it:

Here is the pre 1968 situation with barbed wire:

After 1968 there was just a low concrete barrier defining the border.

And, of course, today the road zigs and zags back and forth across the border.

Secondly the http://www.grenzen.150m.com/ site has the following picture which shows the remainder of the concrete barrier as a "monument" in the centre of a roundabout. This is visible at 2:22 and 7:43 of my video.

Baarle

2008-05-08T19:00:00.007-04:00

A nice sunny evening and a colleague and I took a trip from Eindhoven, where we were at a conference, to visit the two towns of Baarle-Nassau (Netherlands) and Baarle-Hertog (Belgium). While we didn't see all the border attractions in the town we did manage to walk around and spot a few interesting places that I captured on the video below.

To help you navigate around I have included captions for the different streets and here is a local map showing Belgium in yellow and the Netherlands in white. You can click on it for the full size image (about 2MB).

The enclave to the south of town that we visited was H17 - here is a map from the wonderful website http://www.grenspalen.nl/archief/index.html, where you will also find lots of other interesting information about Baarle and other Dutch borders. The road we drove down, and where the video is taken from, is the small yellow one that passes through the west side of the enclave (twice), not the red one that forms the eastern border of the enclave. The video is taken from the northenmost border crossing point on that road.

As we were driving south to here from the main part of the town we were passed by two police vehicles with flashing lights, going north. Dutch police in the lead, Belgian police right behind. This got me to wondering about the complexities of policing in this area - I suspect that you typically need to have both police forces operating together to ensure there is appropriate jurisdiction. The idea of the police from one country driving through another country as part of their duty is interesting to say the least.

The video also includes a segment at the end as we drive back to Eindhoven and cross the border from Belgium back to the Netherlands on the main E34 motorway.

To see this video in higher resolution you will need to visit the YouTube page where it resides.

I hope this helps to give an idea of this place and that you found it interesting. Please leave comments to help me improve my trip reports for future trips.

The Southernmost Point of the Asian Continent

2007-09-29T12:00:00.000-04:00

As part of a short day trip to Singapore from Kuala Lumpur I visited a location that calls itself "The Southernmost Point of the Asian Continent". This is on Sentosa Island in Singapore but actually I think it is not exactly at the very southernmost part of Sentosa. You might ask, "How can an island contain the southermost part of the Continent?". Well it makes this claim because it is connected to Malaysia via bridges from Sentosa to Singapore proper and thence to Malaysia - so you could walk from here to the continent proper.

It is only about 139km north of the Equator - being at latitude N 1° 14' approximately.

Here are a few photos from this place.

And a video of the area:

Kerkrade-Herzogenrath

2007-07-06T20:40:00.000-04:00

My last set of border photos for the day are from the towns of Kerkrade (Netherlands) and Herzogenrath (Germany), where the border runs up the middle of one of the streets - quite innocuously with no significant sign that there is a border here. At the end of my trip I encountered a very pleasant and interesting surprise that I had not expected.

Read on.

First the obligatory map - the red line shows the border and the places where I took some photos are marked as 1 and 2. It was getting quite late now and I still had to get on to Düsseldorf for an early flight to London the next morning so I didn't stop to take photos in between these two spots.

This photo is looking north along the divided road, Netherlands on the left, Germany on the right. It seems to have changed somewhat from previous photos I had seen of the area - something I was to feel as I failed to recognise much of where I then drove.

This video starts looking West North West, pretty much along the border line. I'm not sure if the houses to the left (south) of the street would be in the Netherlands or Germany.

Some more views of the area - note the white and blue street signs in Dutch and German.

I then drove to point 2 which is where the border leaves the centre of the road. I noticed that the road had been significantly changed from previous photos that I had seen with "traffic calming" islands placed along the sides of the road alternating from the Dutch to the German side thereby causing traffic along the street to constantly zig-zag back and forth between the Netherlands and Germany - true multinationalism at work here.

I was using an older German map rather than the Dutch map I have provided here, and this did not have the roundabout we see here marked on it. So, needless to say, this was a huge surprise for me - and what was the other side of the roundabout was an even bigger, and most pleasant, surprise.

Beyond the roundabout is the Eurode Centre - an office complex that straddles the border. I drove (anti-clockwise) around the building and noticed the border signs as I re-entered the Netherlands at the back of the building. So, where the bi-national road had previously petered out somewhat ignominiously, the opportunity had been taken to construct a most imaginative complex that enables companies to take advantage of the border line in many ways.

This is the front entrance - the border runs between the two doors - there is a Dutch mailbox on the left and a German one on the right.

I took a few more photos of the area - I am standing here on the northwest corner of the roundabout looking south.

German sign as the road heads off to the north east

On the Dutch side of the road the Dutch name is on the top:

and on the German side of the road, the German name is on the top.

OK - that was pretty much it. I still wanted to find one geocache in the Netherlands - and there was one in Kerkrade fortunately (albeit a rather lame micro) and to drive along the former N274 Dutch road that crosses a small bit of Germany and used to be completely separated from the German road system. I did so - there are now roundabouts joining it to the German road system since it reverted to German control in 2002 - but it was now getting really late so no photos. Then I headed off to my hotel in Düsseldorf enjoying the empty A46 where I was able legally to hit over 200km/h in places.

Neutral Moresnet - and some older Burgundian borders

2007-07-06T20:00:00.000-04:00

Now it was time to visit the former Neutral Moresnet and seek out some border markers. My original plan included only the border markers of Neutral Moresnet itself, however I found myself also investigating a few older border markers that date back to the Burgundian/Prussian days.

First a map with the numbers indicating various key spots on my tour. The blue and red lines roughly mark the route that I walked while exploring the hinterland (blue outbound, red inbound) following the well thought out directions provided by the creator of this geocache.

Before we start you might like to take a look at this excellent website about the bordermarkers of Neutral Moresnet - following various links from there will take you to all sorts of other interesting places too :) - but do come back here please...

As I drove down the hill from the BEDENL tripoint I stopped to try and find my first Neutral Moresnet border marker around point number 1 on my map above. The map indicated that it should be fairly close to the road. I was not successful, however I did find the following:

This appears to be an old Burgundian marker - something that I did not realise until later in my expedition when I found some others and thus recognised the style.

The side with the writing:

the back side:

also in the area was another marker (and again I found other similar ones later on) but it had no visible inscriptions and so I am still puzzled as to what it is actually signifying. You can see the marker from the pictures above in the background of the picture, which I took deliberately so as to show both of these markers in relation to each other.

a close up shot - perhaps someone can make out a man made pattern here that indicates something?

Anyway, my main goal today was to visit a few markers that had been used as key points for a geocache called Klenkes 2005 - Grenzsteine - this was a multi that required about a 6.5 km walk around the Neutral Moresnet hinterland and so I decided to use it as my guide for the day.

I parked my car at the point marked number 2 on my map and proceeded to cross the territory towards point number 3. As I approached point number 3 I took this video of the surroundings. By the way - I would be really grateful if someone could let me know if I have pronounced Moresnet correctly - I assumed that the French pronunciation (silent "t" for example) would not be correct but it would be nice to hear from SWK ("someone who knows") - thanks.

Moving north up the trail from point number 3 I encountered my first border marker, number 51 (marked in Roman numerals - LI). Sadly some moron had defaced it - this was not the first time I would see this type of thing regrettably.

Proceeding further north I passed spots where the map indicated there should be other border markers, however they were not immediately evident and I didn't have time or energy to go scrabbling through the undergrowth to look for them. I will leave that for another day, and hopefully can find someone who has exact GPS coordinates for them to make the search easier.

This photo is looking north along the border at point number 4 on my map. The geocache instructions said to follow the path as it forks to the left here - upon some investigation I discovered not only that this was an easier path, but also that there was a notice (obscured by the first bush just to the right of the track in this photo) indicating that no foot traffic was permitted along the border track. Should anyone have challenged me I could have claimed that I had not seen it since it was so well obscured, however, I knew the whole walk would be long enough, and it was already 1715, that I decided to opt for the easier route.

The next marker I found was number 44. This exemplifies really well the unusual style of Roman numerals used. Whereas it would be more common to denote this LXIV, instead the (older) XXXXIIII version is used (complete sideline - you will usually see the IIII version on clock faces as well - see this website from the British Horological Institute for some information on this). This was at the point where my path bent back to the left, a short distance south of point number 5 on my map.

Moving further up the trail I found border marker 41 near point number 5 on my map - more desecration unfortunately.

...and a video of the area:

A short way further north is border marker 40 - it is very difficult to read the numbers on this one as they are so faded.

Next stop is border marker number 37 (I could not spot any of the intervening ones easily). This is at the conjunction of this north-south track and another one that crosses it on a diagonal and which marks the former Burgundian border of 1439. (Point 6 on my map). We shall be heading south-east (uphill) along that track next.

More graffiti I'm afraid - what is it that is so appealing about spoiling things?

The video shows the conjunction of the two border lines quite well I think. If one could condense history I suppose one could call this a tripoint of sorts. The video starts looking northwards and the first view along the Burgundian border path (I say "looking down". but it is actually uphill) is, therefore, to the south east.

Now to head away from Neutral Moresnet towards point 7 on my map. On the way to point 7 we encounter this Burgundian marker partly surrounded by a tree.

This video starts looking north-west, along the trail up which I had just walked from point 6 on my map.

Moving further south-east we reach point 7 where there is another Burgundian marker

This marker is at the conjunction of two paths and there are some more of those unidentified posts around as can be seen in this video.

The geocache instructions had me continue south-east further along this path to collect more information from one of the small memorials that abound in this area in order to calculate the final location of the cache. While there I saw (but did not photograph) some more of those unidentified posts although I didn't see any more clearly identified Burgundian markers along the way. The route I was supposed to take would have returned me the short way back to my car, picking up the cache on the way, but I had omitted to collect some info from the first Burgundian marker and my photos were not sufficiently clear when displayed on my camera screen for me to obtain them that way. So I retraced my steps (red line on my map), crossing the Neutral Moresnet territory again and started to look for the cache near the western border. I was feeling pretty tired by now and failed to find the cache itself (although I have been informed since that it IS there!!) but I did find border marker number 18 instead - so that was a bonus. This is at point 8 on my map.

This view is looking north-ish along the borderline - Neutral Moresnet on the right, Belgium on the left. The marker is in the bottom right hand part of the picture.

Somewhat dejectedly (having failed to find the cache - but now I have another excuse to return some day!!) I headed back to my car and drove into the town of Kelmis (or La Calamine in French) to locate the first and last markers, which are on the main N3 road.

First, to the south west of the town, marker number 1 (point 9 on my map). By the marker, which is on the north side of the road, is this board. I'm not sure whether it is trying to tell me that there is any kind of official tourist location for seeking the stones, I think, however, that it is trying discourage trespass down the track beside marker number (which leads away from the border at any rate)

Marker number 1 - looking north west

The marker and the notice board:

another angle, taken from the other side of the (quite busy) road.

...and a video to put it all in perspective (my comentary says a 360° sweep which was my intention - but it's actually only about 180°):

Last stop is the final border marker, number 60 (LX) - to the north east along the main N3, in a more urban setting:

Another notice board:

and finally a few shots of the stone itself. Interestingly THIS stone is on the south side of the road (something I had not expected even though I had seen photos of it on other websites), whereas the stone number 1 is on the north side of the road. So, somewhere along the line, either the border crossed the road, a stone got moved, or the road was realigned. Does anyone know which of these it is?

Looking south-westwards

Taken standing in front of the notice board:

Time now to head off for my last border adventure of the day - the divided street between the Netherlands and Germany in Kerkrade-Hertzogenrath (and a surprise, for me anyway, at the end).

BEDENL

2007-07-06T16:15:00.000-04:00

My next stop was at the BEDENL tripoint. This must be one of the most visited tripoints around and is very commercialised which made it less interesting for me than most - however a visit was necessary just for my own personal satisfaction.

Getting there from Roetgen, however, was not as simple as it seemed since I determined from the map that I could approach from the German side. However, this was not to be so by car since the road leading there is barred and available only to cyclists and pedestrians. So I drove back into the outskirts of Aachen, through Vaals in the Netherlands and then, dutifully following Tom-Tom's instructions, back into Belgium to approach from that direction. Foolishly paying 2€ to park (it was only later that I noticed others had just parked for free at the sides of the approach roads) I wandered around, took a few photos and rewarded myself with an ice-cream!!

This video is making an entire circle around the tripoint marker (I do correct my last mistake on the audio, but it gets lost in the wind!):

The tripoint marker from the Dutch side

...from the Belgian side:

...from the German side - note the small triangle in the stones indicating the former Neutral Moresnet borders, sandwiched between the Belgian and German sections. It could be argued that there should have been a small Belgian sliver between it and the German part as well as the main Belgian section since the former Neutral Moresnet territory is, today, entirely surrounded by Belgium except for where it meets the Netherlands and Germany at this point. However that was not always the case - for more information see the Neutral Moresnet website.

Dutch marker number one - some people think this marks the highest point in the Netherlands but this site seems to disagree, although it is probably not that far away.

Not knowing what this was, but noticing that other people seemed to like having their picture taken here, I snapped this one. It appears to be celebrating the EUREGIO initiative in the area. It is located on Dutch territory here.

Now on to some more challenging border hunting - the border stones of Neutral Moresnet (and a few others).

Vennbahn: Roetgen

2007-07-06T15:00:00.000-04:00

After Lammersdorf I took a slight detour to find some caches in the woods north of the town making a loop around on my way to Roetgen.

First the obligatory map:

The first cache on the Vennbahn in Roetgen is actually at a point where a track, which is now a cycle trail (there are many cycle trails around here - it is a wonderful area for cycling - and it's all so organised!!) crosses the railway in the middle of the woods - Bahnübergang Rackeschweg.

Looking south along the tracks:

Looking north along the tracks:

Approaching the tracks along the trail from the north west (i.e. looking south east)

and a short video of the crossing area:

Now back into the car to investigate the numerous places where the tracks cross the residential streets in Roetgen:

This is the Bahnübergang Wilhelmstraße:

Looking south east:

A border marker - on the north side of the road, east side of the tracks - photo looking south east:

Same marker - looking north east along the road:

and a video of the whole area

At this point I was starting to feel the need to check my e-mail, especially as I had not been able to do so in the hotel the previous evening. Being in a residential area I figured there was a pretty good chance someone had an unsecured wireless network so I spent more time than I should driving up and down trying to find one, but all to no avail.

Anyway, after finding a geocache at the Grünepleistraße crossing and another one a short distance away I headed over to the Kalfstraße crossing. There was another geocache here which, as it turned out, was my 1000th geocache find. I had not realised it at the time but I'm glad it turned out to be one of the Vennbahn caches and not the previous one, which was not a Vennbahn one and was really rather tame! I took another short video here. A local resident came out and asked me what I was doing taking photos - I explained in my broken German that I was interested in the Vennbahn and the fact that it was a bit of Belgium in Germany. This seemed to satisfy him that at least I had no evil intent although I think he went away shaking his head a bit at someone actually having such a strange interest in something that to him was part of everyday life and probably didn't affect him one iota.

The next three crossings I visited (a geocache at each) were really more of the same and so I didn't take any photos there. But the one after that was a surprise - Offermannstraße - this was a bridge and not a level crossing - the cache there had advertised it as a Bahnübergang.

I took this video here:

Around the corner was another bridge at Mühlenbendstraße:

This picture is looking east, from the west side of the bridge:

This is looking west from the east side:

and a video from on top of the bridge:

Time now to head round the corner to the last level crossing in this area of residential Roetgen, a particularly interesting spot as Mühlenstraße runs right along the border with Belgium, the houses on one side being in Belgium and the road itself being in Germany.

Just before (i.e. to the west) of the level crossing was this boundary marker (on the north side of the road:

This is taken on the level crossing itself, looking north.

I then walked a short way back down Mühlenstraße to the west and took a couple more photos of the border markers right at the edge of the road:

and finally a video:

I then drove out onto the B258 in the centre of town which, at this time of day, was really busy. As the time was getting on and I still wanted to visit BEDENL, Neutral Moresnet and a couple of other places before getting to Düsseldorf, I elected not to investigate the area closely even though the border here is pretty interesting. That will have to wait for another day.

Heading north up the B258 my final Vennbahn stop was at Himmelsleiter where the Vennbahn makes its northernmost crossing of a German road.

This photo is looking northwards along the B258 away from Roetgen:

And finally one last video of the Vennbahn for today:

Next stop - the BEDENL tripoint.

Vennbahn: Lammersdorf

2007-07-06T11:15:00.000-04:00

I stopped at a couple of crossings in Lammersdorf and then went to the station where there was another geocache - Vennbahn, Bahnhof Lammersdorf

This map shows the places that I stopped in Lammersdorf.

The first two level crossings are in residential areas. I took videos there:

This is on the street called "Im Venn" - the video is taken from south of the railway line and starts looking north north west

...and just round the corner on Wiehweg - the video is taken from east of the railway line and starts looking north west. The audio that is cut off at the end is "...to go and visit each other".

Here is a view of the Station building looking south-eastwards

...and from the same spot in the other direction

Sadly abandoned and left to decay

The waiting room...

Another geocacher apparently found another item of interest to railway buffs here - I did not spot this but am providing a link to it. For copyright reasons and blogspot's "Terms of Service" reasons I can't embed it into the blog itself. The photo is entitled wisselwerking.jpg (I think this is a Dutch word since this geocacher's log seems to be in Dutch).

Finally a short video clip of the station area taken from near where I found the geocache, which involved a short walk up the tracks to the north. The video starts and ends looking in a northerly direction.

Next I headed off for Roetgen via a circuitous route, finding 6 non-Vennbahn related caches on the way.

Vennbahn: Bahnhof Konzen/Fringshaus

2007-07-06T10:45:00.000-04:00

Next stop on my trip was the geocache Vennbahn, Bahnhof Konzen which was right beside the point where the railway crosses the B258. Of course, this road is also the subject of a border interest in its own right since it crosses a short piece of Belgian territory between here and the Fringshaus without connecting in any way to the Belgian road system.

The following (Belgian) map will hopefully help to put this in perspective, especially in relation to the "German Farm" whence I had just come.

This photo is taken looking into Belgium from a point some 150m south of the railway.

Here is where we cross into Belgian territory, still looking north-ish.

This is a short video of the traffic on this road. The Belgian road signs are very clear on the other side of the railway.

I then drove the length of the Belgian part of the road to the Fringshaus and parked in their car park. While there were a few tracks leading off the main road, as shown on the map, they were typically marked with notices indicating that access was not permitted. I seem to recall they indicated that they were military areas.

This photo is taken from just before the Fringshaus, looking back southwards into Belgium - the border is where the road markings change.

I crossed over the road and walked a short way into Belgium and took this photo looking back northwards into Germany.

Panning round to the right a bit you can see the Fringshaus's car park firmly located in Germany, even though the Fringshaus itself is in Belgium.

Standing in the car park, these two shots are looking south-west down the (Belgian) laneway that is almost covered by the blue arrow in my map above. The border runs along the other side of the main road from where I am standing.

...and this is a shot of the Fringshaus (in Belgium) from its car park (in Germany). From later research it seems as though the car park itself might have been a Belgian counter-enclave at one time before being returned to German sovereignty.

Now on to Lammersdorf.

Vennbahn: The "German Farm" (Rückschlag)

2007-07-06T10:15:00.000-04:00

After breakfast I set off to investigate further north. The two maps below give the German and the Belgian perspective on the area respectively (as well as providing a reference point to relate this area to the Andreaskreuz level crossing). This is the German map:

Foolishly I failed to investigate in detail the short piece of road marked ""Where is the border?" on these maps, although I did drive along it, blithely believing that I had driven into and back out of Belgium at the time. My recollection is that there was a change that made this evident but I cannot be certain and, as you can see, the two maps are inconsistent in how they mark the border. This is the Belgian map:

I turned off the L106 and went along the residential street in Aderich, crossing back to the west side of the tracks just south of the "German Farm" (Rückschlag) enclave at Entenpfuhl (= "Duck Pond"). This photo is looking north along the tracks, my car is parked on the side of the road having crossed back into Belgium.

This photo is looking from the Belgian side back down the road into Aderich. It is a residential street all the way up to the rail lines.

A very short distance further north I encountered the south-eastern corner of the enclave and its border marker which I photographed from 3 angles.

The Belgian side:

The top - clearly showing the 90° turn in the border:

The German side

Looking along the road to the north - farmhouse in the background:

...and a video of the area.

Moving up the road now to the north-east corner of the enclave we find border stone 759

The "T" marking on the top is rather strange - it should really be a "V" mark like at the south east corner I would have thought.

I took a couple of short videos around here. It really seems that this doesn't have a lot to do with the Vennbahn directly since the road is in Belgium as well and so is irrelevant as far as the railway is concerned, being separated from the rail lines by a fairly significant chunk of wood/scrub land

Next - the former Konzen station and the German B258 road that runs through Belgium to the Fringshaus.

Vennbahn: Ruitzhof Enclave

2007-07-06T09:00:00.000-04:00

The most confusing, but possibly most interesting part of the Vennbahn enclave complex is Ruitzhof. This is at the southernmost end of the section of railway that passes through German territory, being just north of the former Kalterherberg station. I had briefly visited here in September 2005 but had left quite confused so I was eager to investigate thoroughly this time.

Here is the map that I provided in my writeup of that visit to set the stage

I spent about an hour here in total this time as I had to get back to my hotel for breakfast which was served at 9am, but this was enough to figure out most of the peculiarities "on the ground".

For some additional "stage setting" I have also produced some images from Google Earth and marked them up to use as a reference in the following (click on these for full size images).

The image above is the south-east corner of the enclave around the Kalterherberg station and level crossing. I have marked my best efforts at delineating the actual borders in blue based on topographical maps (German and Belgian) available to me as enhanced by observations "on the ground". The section of border marked with a hatched line is, to me, uncertain, but follows a stream between two points about which I am confident. Topographical maps have been unhelpful in determining the exact line here - I would need to do more research. It is evident from the topographical map shown above that there are problems using them to determine the exact border line - even the road layout is incorrect around the level crossing!! (Update: see my update at the end of this posting for additional information subsequently received)

I have also marked specific locations that I shall refer to in the following text.

The image above is of the entire enclave. Again borders are marked in blue as well as the spot where I took some photos on the north west border.

OK - onto the details.

First of all the station itself is of general interest. It has now become the office for a business that rents out "rail bikes". People can use these to travel along the rails to the south - the track bed has been reasonably well maintained for this purpose in this direction. Unfortunately they cannot be used to go northwards along the section that runs between German territory - one can speculate on all kinds of reasons why - the problems of maintenance and jurisdiction (in the event of incidents) probably play a part here.

A view of the station building:

These look a lot of fun - but possibly hard work - they were all chained up so I couldn't have a go!!

Looking southwards into Belgium where you could take the rail-bikes.

Moving round to the left from the previous photo is this building that has the sign "Agence en Douane" (Customs Agency) on the wall. I somehow doubt it is still active in that role.

I also took a short video to show the entire area. It was a windy day so apologies for the noise!

Moving up to the level crossing, the first thing I noticed was an old stone that looked as though it could be a boundary marker. This is to the north-east of the level-crossing. In this photo you can see it just tucked into the bush, where the tarmac meets the grass.

I took some close ups of this stone but it was so weathered that it was not possible to tell if, indeed, it was a boundary marker.

This is viewed from the German side.

And this from the Belgian side.

This video is taken from the level crossing, starting by looking south-west, to provide the whole scene.

I then drove down the road, across the small bridge which you could just see in the distance after about 3 seconds of the previous video and again in the following photo (which is taken after I had crossed the bridge and is looking back towards the level crossing, i.e. north-east). At this point I thought, incorrectly it seems, that I was in the enclave. You see, I had misread the rather difficult to interpret topo map and was under the impression that the border was along the stream that this bridge crossed. It was not until I took a closer look at the pumping station and noticed that the signs were in French that I realised that I was still in Belgium and that it was a different stream that delineated the border.

Beside the pumping station was a tourist map of the cycle paths in the whole region - in German interestingly enough.

I still hadn't completely twigged so I went back to the bridge and took another video from there - but of course the commentary on this video is TOTALLY WRONG!!

This photo is from outside the pumping station again looking south-west into this small Belgian community - there is no public road access beyond these houses although there are forest tracks down there.

Finally, having figured out where I was, I went around to the right and headed a few metres north to where the road crossed a small bridge which actually IS the road entrance back into Germany.

This is standing on the bridge looking along the border to the east, Germany (Ruitzhof enclave) on the left, Belgium on the right.

This is looking in the other direction.

Standing in Belgium looking north-east across the bridge. Note the boundary marker on the far bank of the stream just to the left of the bridge.

A closer up view of the boundary marker taken from the bridge.

The very top of the boundary marker. This seems to imply that the border is not actually in the centre of the stream, but on the north bank of the stream.

And a view from the German side
.

This video gives the complete circle picture of the area. I am standing on the Belgian side of the bridge and you can see the pumping station in the background at the start and end of the video clip.

Close up of the sign as you enter the enclave. Zollgrenzbezirk means "Customs District" - I'm not sure exactly what that signifies. Could it perhaps mean that this little area has special treatment for Customs purposes (like Campione d'Italia for example)?

and from behind the sign looking back at Belgium.

I then drove to the far end of the enclave along the "main road" through this farming community. Any of the side roads that you see on the map or Google Earth leading to the railway to the north were marked as "no vehicles except farm vehicles" and "private property", and anyway I really didn't have time to explore them. I did however reach the border as shown on the second of my Google Earth captures above and here are a few photos from there.

Border marker 669

...and a close up of that marker

The view to the south-west, along the border

...and to the north-east along the border

...and, of course, I took the complete circuit video.

Time to head back for breakfast now, but first another stop at that first bridge to try to figure out things from there. This photo shows the border stream coming into the larger stream from the top left of the picture.

A clearer view of the border stream entering the larger one.

There was nothing to indicate whether the border turned to follow the larger stream away from me (I am standing on the bridge) but it seems a likely possibility. I wonder if anyone has more definitive information.

I think I had found out as much as I could by now and it was time for breakfast - so - back to the hotel so I can get ready for the rest of the Vennbahn.

One thing I did realise as a result of this visit is that this enclave would be a pene-enclave even if the Vennbahn track were German territory since there is no public road into this area anyway without passing through Belgian territory. I wonder how it is policed if the German police have to pass through Belgium (and not just a small bit of Belgian railway line) to get there.

Update:

Since originally posting this Len Nadybal has kindly provided the following images from the original treaty which make the actual position of the border much clearer in this area around the bridge. He has kindly allowed me to include these in this blog page.

Vennbahn: Bahnübergang Andreaskreuz

2007-07-06T08:00:00.000-04:00

The next stop before breakfast was the Andreaskreuz level crossing. A short drive down the road from Monschau station. (Of course there's a geocache here too).

This is looking back up the road to the south west

There was a small shrine at the side of the road.

I quickly spotted this border marker at the south east side of the road - I am standing in Belgium looking east towards Germany.

This is looking west - you can just see another border marker in the field on the other side of the road. The one in the field seemed much further from the railway line than I would have expected.

I climbed the barbed wire fence into the field (very carefully!!) to take the following photos looking in the other direction.

Hard to figure out which of these marks actually delineates the border.

...and finally a couple of videos - this one taken from the field on the west side of the road and railway.

and this from back near my car again.

Now on to Ruitzhof (picking up a couple of geocaches on the way as well)

Vennbahn: Bahnhof Monschau

2007-07-06T07:05:00.000-04:00

I arrived at my hotel, the Hubertusklause Hotel and Restaurant, in Monschau rather late last night - so late that it was closed!! I should have read the booking that said check-in was until 9pm. However, a quick phonecall to the published number produced the owner who let me in and saw me to my room. Feeling rather chastened I didn't complain when he told me that the wireless internet was down due to renovations although this was a bit disappointing. Nevertheless I STRONGLY RECOMMEND this as a place to stay - really, really friendly people - comfortable room, a great breakfast, free WiFi (when it is working) - and all for only 42 € per night.

Having only a day to do an awful lot I rose at 6am to head out on the first part of my Vennbahn expedition before the 9am (a civilised time!!) breakfast. The hotel was just a short way down the hill from Monschau station so that was the first stop on my tour. Someone has placed a large number of geocaches all along the Vennbahn - at almost every crossing and station - and so that was a great way to merge my two related hobbies today. Yesterday evening, after my drive from Frankfurt, I had found 4 that were along the totally Belgian part of the railway, all of which contributed to my tardy arrival at the hotel. I did also briefly visit the quaint town centre of Monschau - it gets dark so late at this time of year (sunset was at 2149) that I quite forgot the time. There is a rare webcam geocache (Monschau Cam) there that is worth taking a look at online since you can see a live view of Monschau at any time of day by following the instructions at that cache listing page. Anyway, today was the day to focus on the part of the Vennbahn that ran through Germany. The first one was entitled, not surprisingly, Vennbahn, Bahnhof Monschau. First of all, though, I went for a short drive under and over some bridges, seeking some evidence of a VDOS (Vertical Differentiation of Sovereignty). Any that I did find was very nebulous though, being more in the manner of omission of anything indicating Belgian ownership or responsibility for the road under or over the railway. Quite inconclusive.

First a map to show where the various photos and videos are from.

This is Bridge 1 from the map above where the road passes under the railway. We'll come back here later.

Turning left I quickly crossed over the railway at Bridge 2 - a still and a video here.

Further down the railway to the next bridge, number 3

And a short way further to Bridge 4

Time now to return to the station area itself.

A view where the road crosses the railway - looking north east

and in the opposite direction

A nearer view of the level crossing

The station house is pretty much abandoned - I needed to gather some information off some notices from here to calculate the final location of the geocache. It turned out that I needed to walk down the railway a short way to find it near the first bridge that I had driven under.

A video of the whole station area.

As I walked down the railway I encountered some log storage.

The station area comes to an end as the multiple tracks converge into a single line, and another necessary piece of information to calculate the final geocache coordinates is found.

Looking North from the top of Bridge 1, close to where the geocache was finally located.

What looks like a boundary marker (complete with very large snail) on the north of the railway lines, between Bridge 1 and the station.

...and another boundary stone, on the south side of the railway line this time. The road junction you see is that close to the letters ND on the earlier map.

The same border marker is just visible in the long grass here

Looking down the railway in the other direction, towards Bridge 2

...and finally a last video from this area.

Now it's time to move on to the Bahnübergang Andreaskreuz (level crossing).

A neat Baarle link

2007-06-28T09:00:00.000-04:00

I was talking to a Dutch colleague of mine when to my surprise I discovered he lives quite close to Baarle Nassau/Hertog and has quite an interest in border related matters as well. He has provided me with a rather neat link for viewing the town with the en/exclaves overlaid on Google Maps.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/download.php?Number=836332&t=k&om=1

Following links from this I also discovered this article in Dutch which I had not encountered before:

http://belgeoblog.be/2007/03/18/baarle-hertognassau-een-dorp-twee-landen/

Some older border hunting adventures

2007-06-27T12:46:00.000-04:00

Since I will probably be using blogspot to record my border hunting adventures from now on here are some links to older pages that I produced

http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/555/index.htm (includes various interesting spots along the German border starting with Schengen and the Luxembourg/German condominium over the river Moselle, moving on to the BEDELU tripoint/line, the Vennbahn and the southernmost point in the Netherlands)

http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/Baltics/ (see where I travelled legally through Russia without a visa)

http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/Buesingen/ (Germany in Switzerland)

http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/Llivia/ (Spain in France)

http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/VelkeSlemence/ (a divided village Slovakia/Ukraine reunited after 60 years)

http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/Andorra/ (Andorra/Spain border)

http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/CZPLSK (Czech Republic/Poland/Slovakia tripoint)

http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/FIRU/ (Finland Russia border)

http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/Japan_2005-11-05/ (some Japanese internal tripoints)

http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/Japan_2005-11-12_to_2005-11-14/ (some more Japanese internal tripoints)

Hungary-Romania-Serbia tripoint

Austria-Slovenia border just north of Maribor

Some internal Spanish tripoints

Liechtenstein

2007-06-15T13:49:00.000-04:00

Today we drove back to München from Lugano via Liechtenstein. In order to get Liechtenstein stamps in Flora and David's passports (I already had one in mine) we drove into Austria via a back road and then back into Liechtenstein on the main road.

Earlier we had stopped to find a geocache (2-Brücken-Cache) that I had been unable to locate on my last trip here - this was in a covered bridge that goes across the Rhine between Liechtenstein and Switzerland. Here are a few photos.

The required "right foot in Liechtenstein, left in Switzerland" shot

Liechtenstein in the background

Switzerland in the background

And they got me to pose for one of those shots too

Campione d'Italia

2007-06-14T13:19:00.000-04:00

Today we drove to Lugano and took the opportunity to visit the Italian exclave of Campione d'Italia - a small part of Italy entirely surrounded by Switzerland. Unfortunately David was suffering from car sickness so we didn't spend much time there other than driving through the town and taking a few photos at the entrance. I noticed that the police cars appeared to be Italian but had Swiss number plates. The other (not really border related at all) observation was all the cars that carefully parked at the side of the road (half on the sidewalk) UNDER the tunnels (presumably to keep in the shade).

David's right foot is in Italy, his left in Switzerland.

An unobstructed view along the border line

The border marker at the east side of the road.

Looking back in the opposite direction (i.e. westwards) along the border line

Border marker in the road surface. The border makes a 90° turn here.

You might also want to visit this really interesting website about the border markers of Campione d'Italia.

Austria-Italy-Slovenia

2007-06-11T21:41:00.000-04:00

While on family vacation driving from Salzburg to Venice we decided to visit the ATITSI tripoint. We particularly wanted to find the geocache called Tromeja that is located there just inside Slovenia, especially since my son David (aged 12, who has his own geocaching account) had not yet found a cache in Slovenia and this would likely be his only opportunity for a long time to come.

The tripoint is located on the top of a mountain and accessible from the Austrian side by cable chair lift (starting from Seltschach - follow the signs to "Dreiländereck") followed by a 20-25 minute hike along the mountain ridge. Unfortunately we did not know beforehand that the cable car made its last run at 4pm - a fact we discovered to our chagrin when we drove into the carpark at the bottom of the chair lift just after 3pm. (At which point I started to quietly regret the hour we had spent at the Porsche museum in Gmünd on the way - a stop that was the result of a serendipitous find and had not been planned - but nevertheless appealed tremendously to David - so I didn't really regret it that much). Figuring that we could just make the trip in time though, we forked out the necessary 22 € and boarded the cable car.

On arriving at the top we headed out as fast as we could for the tripoint which our GPS showed to be about 950m away. Being at 4500 ft asl and there being quite an uphill climb for the second part of the walk, it was tough going to keep up the pace necessary to ensure we were not stranded at the top when the chair lift closed. We made it to the tripoint area at about 325pm and so we really only had about 10 minutes there to look around, take photos and find the geocache. Sadly we were unable to figure out the somewhat cryptic geocache description and so did not find it. However, we did manage some photos and a couple of short movies of the area which are shown below.

We made it back to the chair lift, puffing and panting, just as they were starting to close it up for the day. But it was only 355pm and so they had to let us ride it down as the last passengers for the day - phew!!

We rewarded ourselves with an ice cream at the little restaurant at the base of the chair lift before heading on to Venice.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

You can view the full size version of all the photos by clicking on these smaller versions.

This appeared to be the tripoint marker itself, having the three countries' shields on it. I later discovered that it is not, in fact, the tripoint - that being the marker at the top of the hill.

Just down the hill from there is this triangular monument that has an inscription on each side. I photographed all three sides without stopping to read the inscriptions since we were so short of time. This picture is taken looking northwards. You can see what I understood to be the actual tripoint marker in the background of this picture. At the top of the hill, behind that, is a hut, which appears to be just in Italy given the positioning of the border markers there. Austria is to the right of that hut. I am standing in Slovenia. In this first photo you can also see the first boundary marker for each of the ATIT, ATSI aand ITSI borders (clockwise starting from the one at the top of the hill). Later on I discovered that the marker at the top of the hill is the actual tripoint. We were so rushed that we really didn't have time to think about the actual layout in detail when we were there.

This video is of my son running around what I took to be the actual tripoint. As it turns out this was not the actual tripoint - but he had fun doing this anyway.

I also took a video from the top of the hill panning round almost 360° - sorry if my commentary sounds a little breathless - we were really rushed!! I have also realised, since filming it, that the starting point is really looking more at Austria than at Italy, notwithstanding the commentary on the video. The final comment about the marker being Austria-Italy marker number 1 does not give the complete story - it is actually the tripoint itself - which we did not realise at the time.

On the way back to the chair lift I took a few more photos:

Looking towards Austria (i.e. north east)

ATSI border is delineated with a rope fence. There are stiles inserted at various places (but not shown here I'm afraid).

David marching purposefully back to the chair lift, taking a better route than his parents did!!

An ATSI border marker plate (the post behind it is one of those holding the rope fence)

A restaurant just in Austria. Slovenia is to the right of it. There is a ski chair lift that appears to cris-cross the border on the right as well.

View from the chair lift on the way down

Horses (and feet) seen on the way down.

Looking back at the cable car run.

San Marino

2007-05-12T21:43:00.000-04:00

Today it's off to San Marino to find at least one geocache in my 33rd caching country. At the same time I shall check out some of the border stuff.

Looking South into San Marino from Italy at the crossing on the SP15TER - Via Drogana (Italy), Via Rivo Fontanelle (San Marino)

Another view of the same entrance.

On the eastern border of San Marino there is a road that runs along the border in San Marino - the Strada di Monte Olivo. This is a border marker at the south end of this road.

Same marker from another angle.

Same border marker in context.

Proceeding about 250 up the road which then turns to the right into Italy, I stopped and took this photo looking back into San Marino.

This is looking back down the "border road" - the border marker just to the left of the street sign.

Close up of the border marker

Another angle

And, for completeness, another angle.

I then headed off to Montescudo, crossing into and back out of San Marino again.

The border is in the middle of the bridge - this is looking into Italy.

Closer shot showing the signs better

Looking back into San Marino.

I didn't have a lot of time to do much border stuff here as it was a long drive back to Rome (about 350km) and I had an early plane to catch the next morning.

Vatican City

2007-05-11T21:36:00.000-04:00

Flew to Rome from München on my (roundabout) way to London - arrived late and the power was out when I reached my hotel not far from the airport. This made it difficult to actually identify which building actually was the hotel, not to mention the fact that I had to figure out all the circuit breakers that had tripped in order to get light in my room - sigh!! After settling in I decided to head into Rome to take my opportunity to find the two Vatican City caches and to actually set foot in the Vatican (thereby gaining one more border crossing). Found the caches - easy in the dark - not too many muggles - saw St. Peter's Square. Got stopped by the police trying to get out of the square the short way - waited till they had gone and then exited that way anyway.

Tomorrow, off to San Marino.

Poland and its borders with Lithuania, Russia (Kaliningrad) and Belarus

2007-03-24T23:59:00.001-04:00

The last full day of my short Baltics trip was a Saturday and the plan was to visit Poland. Jan Krogh and I drove from Vilnius starting fairly early in the morning as we had arranged to meet another border hunter, Artur Kroc, in the northern Polish town of Sejny. He had made the 670km trip from Poznan by train and bus to meet with us on this expedition. It was really a great experience for me to have brought together 3 people from the esoteric community of border hunters, who had never met in person, 6000km from my home, to go seeking strange points on the earth's surface!

Having used the wonderful power of mobile phone texting to connect, we quickly found Artur at a bus stop in Sejny (despite getting confused by the one hour time change when we crossed the border) and headed off towards the point where Poland, Russia (in the form of its exclave, Kaliningrad) and Lithuania meet. First, however, there were a couple of geocaches I wanted to find. These were of especial interest as they were FTF ("first to find") opportunities - having been placed in August of 2006 and unfound as of yet. The best maps we had were old Soviet era black and white topographical maps georererenced and displayed on my laptop connected to a GPS receiver on the roof of the car. Some of the tracks on those maps were dubious at best.

As we approached the turn off the main road we planned to take to locate the first of these caches we were stopped by the Polish Border Patrol. So here we were - me driving - a resident of Canada, travelling on a UK passport in a Latvian registered car close to the Poland/Russia/Lithuania border. Obviously highly suspicious. I am so glad we had Artur with us at this point since he was our only Polish speaker and was able to ensure all parties understood each other. They took my passport and the car's papers (not the other fellows' though - was I worried?) back to their vehicle to check while we all got out and stood around at the top of a very windy hill - but it was a nice sunny day so we could enjoy the view. Eventually my papers were returned with no issues and we were on our way. However, our way happened to be to turn down the farm track immediately at the spot where we had been stopped, in a direction leading right towards the border. We certainly expected to be chased after - but we were not.

Anyway, we found that cache and another FTF opportunity in the area and so we then headed off to the tripoint.

The tripoint is only about 200m from the main road and clearly open for access - up as far as the fence. The fence is new since Jan's previous visit and unfortunately, although it ended only about 40m from the tripoint itself, was sufficient to discourage me from running over to do the run around the tripoint marker itself, thereby robbing me of an LTRU border crossing (I picked up a PLRU a short time later - see upcoming pics).

Closer view of the tripoint. If you compare this photo with those on Jan's site it would appear that the Russian border marker is still located on Lithuanian territory. There is also, now, a fence approaching the tripoint from the Polish side - it does not seem to have much practical purpose but might, perhaps, delineate the internal Polish municipal border that make this a quadripoint as well.

Big notice saying you could no go closer than 5m from the border. You could hardly say you hadn't spotted it!! However, it also says you can't take photos of the border area or of the land beyond it - so having broken one rule already maybe I shouldn't have worried so much.

And some nice touristy stuff.

The whole display board.

This is a view along the Russia (left), Lithuania (right) border - looking north.

This is the view along the Poland (left), Russia (right) border - looking west.

This is a view along the Lithuania (left), Poland (right) border - looking east.

Zoomed in on Russia/Lithuania.

Looking back at the tripoint from where I was considering making a run for it.

Looks close? Not when the camera is not zoomed in! It was just not worth the risk!

Artur (right) and me in front of the tripoint.

Jan and Artur in front of the tripoint.

Me taking one of those other photos (photo courtesy of Jan Krogh)

So - no border crossing happened there - but Jan figured that if we drove a short distance to the west there was a village with a track that led right up to the Russian border.

He was right - that's Russia over there.

There is a path leading up from the road to the border line, and a broken fence at the top of it. Off I head. (Photo courtesy of Jan Krogh)

And there, just a few metres away - an opportunity for a PLRU crossing.

Made it -(and back again safely) - me in Russia. (Photo courtesy of Jan Krogh)

Along the border line to the east - Russia on the left.

OK - now it's off to have some lunch and check out the border with Belarus.

Get out the tripod for a "team photo" (I really must wash that car with its Estonian dirt on it!).

Navigating our way to the BYLTPL was fun but with the laptop and the Soviet era topo maps connected to the GPS we eventually found our way to within 1km of the tripoint which Jan had previously recorded the position of on his handheld GPSr. We stopped the car once the forest tracks became too challenging for the VW and proceeded on foot through the woods. The spring flowers were just starting to appear on the forest floor - this is really one of my favourite times of year to be in the woods - before all the bugs are out and while you can still see through the trees before there are too many leaves on them. Anyway, we were following Jan's GPSr along the top of a ridge when I looked down and said "That looks like a Belorussian border marker" (it being green and red and all). Oops - it looks like Jan's coordinates might have been for a border marker further south than the tripoint (1788 perhaps - see his website). So we scrambled down the hill and were met with a significantly different vista than what Jan had encountered on his previous trip. Of course the undergrowth was much less (that having been later in the year) but, more than that, there was some major construction going on along the BYPL border to demarcate it more clearly as well as to ensure that the river's boundaries were not going to change. In retrospect we were lucky we had gone on a Saturday since had it been a weekday there would probably have been construction crews working there and we would have had great difficulty investigating the tripoint.

This tripoint is in the middle of the river and the river was reasonably full so, without wading gear, we could not attempt a circuit of the point itself - we confined ourselves to the BYPL bank of the river for our photographs and exploration.

Well, here I am in Belarus and you can clearly see the Lithuanian marker in the background along with the Lithuanian guards' hut - but where is the Polish marker?

Ah - that's where it is - temporarily removed for construction to take place.

This is looking south along the Belarus (left), Poland (right) border towards BM 1788 (pictured on Jan's website linked to earlier).

To give a better impression of the work being done on the river bank I took this series of photos going anti-clockwise - this one is looking towards the BYPL border - you can see the PL marker on the ground.

Round to the left a bit looking along the line of the Lithuania (left), Belarus (right) border - tripoint in the middle of the river.

Looking northwards along the Poland (left), Lithuania (right) border.

And finally - I took a few more brave steps into Belarus to get this shot along the Lithuania (left), Belarus (right) border - i.e. looking east south-east.

Meanwhile Jan is taking a photo of me taking the last photo, while standing safely in Poland.

We then headed back to the car, drove out to the surfaced roads (grounding out the rental car a bit on the way causing some minor consternation when the engine warning light came on and didn't go off again for at least 75km), said our farewells to Artur at the bus-stop in Giby, and Jan and I headed back to Vilnius. We got back to Vilnius safely, depsite my getting a 50 Lats "pay on the spot" speeding ticket on the way for doing 110km in a 90 km zone - open straight road - definite ticket bait territory - (thanks Jan for talking them down from 100 Lats), and found one more FTF geocache in Vilnius before picking up Jan's car. But all was not simple - his car had a flat tyre when we got back and I disappeared off (thinking I was following him whereas it was someone else with a similar car) - but with the power of the mobile phone we reconnected so we could go to the petrol station together, fill up, get my rental car washed (finally!!) and I could head off to Riga where I was to stay the last night before catching my plane. However, warning - avoid Riga hotels on a Saturday night - they are full of drunken Brits who have come to the "stag party capital of Europe" on super cheap flights from the likes of Ryanair. Not a pretty sight and makes me want to hide my UK passport :(

Thanks Jan and Artur for the company - it was a great day - one I shall never forget, made all the better by doing it with you guys. Looking forward to the next expedition!!

Lithuania and its borders with Latvia and Belarus

2007-03-23T23:59:00.000-04:00

Stayed overnight in Riga but had a bad start by waking up late (messed up the alarm on my PDA) and so getting stuck in traffic leaving Riga. I also managed in all the rush to get out of the hotel to leave my glasses in my room. Fortunately I was back staying at the same hotel on the Saturday night and it was with great relief that I retrieved them when I arrived there. I was due to meet Jan Krogh (a Norwegian who lives in Vilnius and has the same weird interests as me when it comes to border hunting) in Visaginas near the Lithuania-Latvia-Belarus tripoint as he had kindly offered to guide me on the next two days of my expedition. Being from Canada I am not used to text messaging much so it was slightly challenging to keep in touch with him this way while driving (I kept having to spell out numbers as I didn't know how to enter them into a text message!) - but eventually I was 5 minutes from the border so was able to advise him where I was.

I crossed the border into Lithuania at Turmantas and continued driving slowly (I thought) through the town when I was pulled over by someone in military uniform as I was about to leave the town. "Uh oh" I thought - "I'm sure I wasn't speeding". My concern turned to pleasure when I discovered that it was Jan, wearing parts of his former Norwegian Military/United Nations uniform, who had pulled me over. So we were able to bypass Visaginas, although this did mean that we missed visiting the nuclear power plant near there that he had wanted to visit. It lies on the edge of a lake that straddles the border with Belarus - apparently there are Lithuanian controlled dams on the Belorussian side that are used to control to water level serving this plant. Jan had arranged from an officer from the Visaginas Cordon of the Lithuanian Border Guards to escort us to the tripoint. We travelled the last part of the route in the guard's 4x4 as it was a rather bumpy section of farm track leading up to the tripoint itself.

Before meeting him, however, we stopped at a quite interesting intersection:

The road sign is definitely unique.

We continued straight on until we came to the limits of where we were allowed to go unescorted.

We could just see the Belarus border down the bottom of this track.

We then proceeded to the tripoint and took lots of photos. It is interesting to compare these with the photos Jan took when he visited in August 2001:

A general view of the area on the Lithuanian side - the actual tripoint is in the background towards the left where a platform has been built to mark its location. In the foreground is an area where various traditional structures have been built for special celebrations to take place.

The open area in the background is in Belarus.

This is standing at the tripoint looking southwards along the Belarus (left) and Lithuanian (right) border - so here we are at the northern most point of this border - tomorrow we shall be at its southernmost point.

This is a view of the platform with the tripoint in the middle - Jan's excellent website shows the exact line of the borders.

And another - the only area where we felt comfortable stepping off the platform was on the Lithuanian side since we were in the company of the Lithuanian border guard.

All of this photo is in Belarus - taken from the tripoint itself. I really wanted to rush out and photograph the front of that sign but with the Lithuanian border guard there I did not dare.

The Latvian border marker - there is no Latvian infrastructure whatsoever leading up to the tripoint, unlike the Lithuanian and Belorussian sides.

Looking west from the tripoint along the ditch marking the Lithuania (left) Latvia (right) border

Looking east from the tripoint along the ditch marking the Latvia (left) Belarus (right) border.

A small monument has been placed in the Belarus section.

The guard and Jan at the tripoint. Unfortunately my camera misfired when Jan took photos of me at the tripoint so you will not see any of me there!

Lithuania in the background. I felt pretty certain that even on the platform, the Lithuanian border guard never stepped outside Lithuanian territory.

Looking from Lithuania down the Belorussian access road (although how many people are allowed to access this point and under what conditions, I wonder). Apparently the tripoint used to be about where the road curves to the left in this picture with the BYLT border running to the right through the woods into the lake that is behind those trees. It was moved to be to the west of the lake some time ago for easier maintenance.

The guard and Jan sitting at a picnic place near the tripoint discussing details of the arrangements with Belarus for controlling the lake level to manage the nuclear power plant. Apparently they have regular parties for the children of the Lithuanian border guards here. I hope there are no incidents where the kids rush off across the border - their parents would have some difficulty chasing after them!

Leaving the area we stopped to look at this bunker which formed part of the front lines between Germany and Russia in WW II. Nearby was a woman using an old fashioned well (bucket on a rope type) to fill plastic water jugs. With the curious clash of old and new (note the satellite TV dish) I almost expected to see her talking on her mobile phone while doing so.

Our next visit was to Adutiškis where the railway line runs (or at least ran) along the BYLT border. Again it is interesting to compare these photos with those taken by Jan in August 2001. Things have really changed since then.

There is now a fence on the Lithuanian side of the tracks - this prevents accidental border incursions at least.

Taken looking through the fence, into Belarus - there is actually a gate in the fence here - but it was padlocked :)

Along the fence to the east

Along the fence to the west - Jan in the foreground.

Photo taken over the fence - the binational track has now been removed. The small white marker is the actual border - so this is an unusual situation where the national markers are not equidistant from the border (because of the rail track that is still there on the Belorussian side).

A bit further to the west, towards where the station building pictured by Jan in 2001 used to be. That has now been removed as the line is no longer there nor active. Since this is the border of the European Union these situations where such "shared facilities" are accommodated are fast disappearing. Jan felt that this was causing gradual decline of the border towns which are becoming less viable due to such restrictions.

We had one more border stop to make before heading back to Vilnius - this was a farm that backs onto the border, a bit further west than Adutiškis. As we drove down the rough farm tracks to approach this area we encountered the border guards but Jan was able to explain our innocent enough intentions and having the business card of the guard who had accompanied us to the tripoint earlier in the day was certainly helpful. They still seemed a little nervous but were happy enough to accompany us to the farm and border area. The farmer was quite intrigued to meet a visitor from Canada - I imagine that there are not too many of those that make it to his farm. Jan explained that, in all probability, when he finally retires, the farm will be abandoned and there will no longer be a resident this close to the border here.

A view along the border line.

Jan checking the map with the farm in the background.

Now it was time to head back to Vilnius - we did stop to find a geocache on the way - my first in Lithuania - my 30th country for finding geocaches. By a strange coincidence this had been set by someone whom Jan had known well during the 1991 Lithuanian freedom struggle and who had also visited Jan's only cache exactly one year previously.

Tomorrow - off to Poland!!