One Café, Two Countries

There is a café where your coffee is in one country and your cake is in another. It stands in a small town called Baarle, where the border between Belgium and the Netherlands does not politely go around the houses. It goes through them. White crosses and metal studs run along the streets, across doorsteps, under shop shelves and straight through café tables. Tag the friend you would sit across the border from.

Existuje kaviareň, kde je tvoja káva v jednej krajine a koláč v druhej. Stojí v malom mestečku Baarle, kde hranica medzi Belgickom a Holandskom slušne neobchádza domy. Ide priamo cez ne. Biele kríže a kovové nity vedú po uliciach, cez prahy domov, pod policami v obchodoch a rovno cez stoly v kaviarni. Označ kamaráta, s ktorým by si si sadol oproti sebe cez hranicu.

How did this happen? Centuries ago, local lords traded and gifted pieces of land the way people trade cards. The result is a town made of patches. Little islands of Belgium sit inside the Netherlands, and inside some of those islands sit even smaller islands of Dutch land. Nobody ever tidied it up, so the border stayed, zigzagging through everyday life.

Ako k tomu došlo? Pred storočiami miestni páni obchodovali a darovali si kúsky zeme, akoby si vymieňali kartičky. Výsledkom je mesto zložené z fliačikov. Malé ostrovčeky Belgicka ležia vnútri Holandska a vnútri niektorých z nich ležia ešte menšie ostrovčeky holandskej zeme. Nikto to nikdy neusporiadal, takže hranica zostala a kľukatí sa cez každodenný život.

The town has learned to enjoy it. The rule for houses is simple, your country is wherever your front door is, and a few houses have two doors and two addresses. At the café, you can hold your cup in one country and set it down in the other. It is probably the only place on Earth where you can leave the country by passing the sugar.

Mesto sa to naučilo užívať. Pravidlo pre domy je jednoduché: tvoja krajina je tam, kde sú tvoje vchodové dvere, a niekoľko domov má dvoje dverí a dve adresy. V kaviarni môžeš držať šálku v jednej krajine a postaviť ju v druhej. Je to asi jediné miesto na Zemi, kde môžeš opustiť krajinu podaním cukru.