The Atlas of Unusual Borders: Discover intriguing boundaries, territories and geographical curiosities

by Zoran Nikolić

Although Büsingen territorially belongs to the German city of Konstanz, where vehicle licence plates are denoted with KN, Büsingen has its own licence plates with the marking BÜS. This allows for simpler control by the Swiss customs, as these cars are treated as local. In fact, however, most residents of Büsingen have their cars registered in the Swiss canton of Schaff hausen, meaning that licence plates with the letters BÜS are among the rarest in Germany and can be found only on a few hundred vehicles. And finally, a sporting oddity: the local football club is the only German club competing in the Swiss league.

In order to make the situation a little clearer (primarily because of the large number of tourists who visit), boundaries are often physically marked on the streets themselves. Also, as Dutch and Belgian house numbering diff ers, there is sometimes a Dutch or Belgian flag alongside the house number. In cases where the boundary cuts through a house, its ‘citizenship’ is determined on the basis of

whose territory the front door is facing. Throughout history – and accompanying numerous changes of tax rates in the Netherlands and Belgium – relocating the front door was not unusual, in order that the owner could pay less tax.

About eighty kilometres east of Province Point there is a city divided by the border to form Canadian Stanstead and American Beebe Plain. Here we have two oddities. Firstly, the boundary line runs along the centre of the main street, so that the houses on one side of the street are in Canada and, on the other, in the United States. Secondly, there is a unique library and opera building (Haskell Free Library and Opera House), which opened at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was deliberately built on the border, in order to bring these two large countries culturally closer. Since almost all of the books and the stage are located on the Canadian side, it is often said that this is the only American library without books and the only American opera without a stage. The border is marked with a black line across the inside of the building.

While ordinary people can visit Mount Athos, they must fulfil two criteria: they have a special permit and they are not female. The females of almost all species are prohibited from entering the Holy Mountain. Apparently, the only females that are exempt from this rule are cats and chickens (the first, to hunt mice; the second, to lay eggs, whose yolks are used as a dye for the iconography). In the fourteenth century, Serbian Emperor Dušan the Mighty brought his wife, Empress Helena, to Athos, to protect her from the plague. In order to respect the ban on the entry by women, the empress was carried in a litter at all times, so as not to touch the soil of the Holy Mountain.