Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: Belgium

  • Deadly Fog

    I was thinking recently about a huge multi-vehicle accident that happened in Virginia a few months ago. That one involved 77 vehicles in thick fog. Of course it was a terrible tragedy that I wouldn’t wish on anybody. It also made me wonder whether it was the worst possible, or whether there were others even…

  • Short Distance Namesakes

    Something has been bothering me since I mentioned the town of Washington, Virginia recently in Flip-Flopping. It claims title to the oldest town named for George Washington, platted by none other than George Washington himself in 1749. I noted that many call it Little Washington to differentiate it from nearby Washington, DC which dates to…

  • Slices of Belgium

    Immigration and the fingerprints it leaves behind sometimes finds its way to Twelve Mile Circle as a topic of conversation. The legacy remains even after a successful assimilation and disbursement of the original population. I’m curious particularly about the smallest populations of settlers in new lands — and it might be difficult to get more…

  • Vennbahn

    Google Street View finally arrived in Belgium. This offered an opportunity to revisit a topic that’s been sitting in my queue unaddressed for the longest time. I figured that most of us were familiar with the Belgian portion of the Vennbahn railroad line. This is the line that created several small German enclaves within Belgium…

  • International Clip

    I’ve always had a thing about collecting and counting geography. You’ve seen plenty of examples of that on Twelve Mile Circle before. For example, reference my ongoing tally of U.S. counties that I have visited. Sometimes these “visits” are exceedingly brief, even measuring to mere seconds. Yet, they still count according to the arbitrary rules…

  • Right Up to the Line (again)

    This is my second attempt to present this article, following the debacle yesterday evening when I posted a rough outline. That was the first time I’d hit the publish button prematurely in nearly 500 articles. I suppose it was bound to happen eventually. Hopefully it didn’t cause too much confusion. The whole point of this…

  • Hier Wird Deutsch Gesprochen

    In Belgium, ongoing tensions between Flemish-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia receives a lot of attention. However, there’s actually a third distinct Belgian linguistic community, the German-speaking people of the East Cantons. This community represents approximately 70,000 people, or a little less than one percent of the nation’s population. It retains a level of political independence…

  • Neutral Moresnet

    All this recent talk on Twelve Mile Circle about strange European borders and condominium arrangements brings me to one of my favorite former anomalies: Neutral Moresnet. This place existed as somewhat of a no-man’s-land lodged firmly between sovereign neighbors from 1816 to 1920. Europe looked different as Napoleon’s empire dissolved. The victors negotiated amongst themselves…

  • Baarle-Hertog Quadripoint Boundary Cross

    I love getting comments from readers. Recently I received an email about a quote from my recent Jungholz Quadripoint Boundary Cross posting. As a reminder, a quadripoint occurs when four borders meet at a single point, and example being the “Four Corners” of the United States where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado join together.…