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German exclaves in Belgium separated by a bicycle path from the rest of Germany

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Re: German exclaves in Belgium separated by a bicycle path from the rest of Germany

#31

Post by galago »

gammateam wrote: post #27
dividuum wrote: post #12

Odd borders are funny. Here's two other examples: The utter chaos in Baarle. They even have nested enclaves. So area of Netherlands surrounded by Belgium surrounded by Netherlands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle-Nassau https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/51.4402/4.9316 Between Germany and Switzerland, there's the German exclave Büsingen am Hochrhein. They have odd tax rules as Swiss VAT is applied. https://en…

The german entry for Büsingen is MUCH more detailed https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Büsingen_am_Hochrhein This really frustrates me about Wikipedia because its like a totally parallel site and experience thats just right there and can even have conflicting information. Not helping the world as much as we think, but its so close to being able to.

Can't we just all agree to speak English? No, I don't think that would be a good idea. Perhaps they could write a (albeit imperfect) tool to alert readers when another language has a much larger or more comprehensive article. I'm sure the Wikipedians have considered the fact that some information is better presented in a particular language. For example, an article about Shakespeare will be more precise in English than Chinese. However, I think it would be another kind of loss if the Shakespeare article was just in English and we forced people to use automated translators. Some might argue that this applies to all scholarship, not just Wikipedia.

Re: German exclaves in Belgium separated by a bicycle path from the rest of Germany

#32

Post by jwr »

This is a good time to consider what a ridiculous concept "borders" are, especially within the EU. What makes land and people on one side of an arbitrary line so different from land and people on the other side of it?

Borders are necessary because of power-hungry politicians: without borders, entire levels of governments would become unnecessary. This is why we hear so much about "patriotism" these days.

Re: German exclaves in Belgium separated by a bicycle path from the rest of Germany

#33

Post by badpun »

jwr wrote: post #32

This is a good time to consider what a ridiculous concept "borders" are, especially within the EU. What makes land and people on one side of an arbitrary line so different from land and people on the other side of it? Borders are necessary because of power-hungry politicians: without borders, entire levels of governments would become unnecessary. This is why we hear so much about "patriotism" these days.

> What makes land and people on one side of an arbitrary line so different from land and people on the other side of it?

Cultures? People on one both sides of the border generally have different culture and hierarchies of values. Thanks to borders, every nation gets to organize their piece of earth as they see fit (at least in democracies).

Re: German exclaves in Belgium separated by a bicycle path from the rest of Germany

#34

Post by gammateam »

galago wrote: post #31
gammateam wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The german entry for Büsingen is MUCH more detailed https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Büsingen_am_Hochrhein This really frustrates me about Wikipedia because its like a totally parallel site and experience thats just right there and can even have conflicting information. Not helping the world as much as we think, but its so close to being able to.

Can't we just all agree to speak English? No, I don't think that would be a good idea. Perhaps they could write a (albeit imperfect) tool to alert readers when another language has a much larger or more comprehensive article. I'm sure the Wikipedians have considered the fact that some information is better presented in a particular language. For example, an article about Shakespeare will be more precise in English th…

The current issue isnt about being presented better in a different language, its just that these are basically different websites and different crowd sourced encyclopedias

I think your notification idea is good

It could look at number of sections, clusters of contributor activity, and then weigh that by character length with different weightings for each language

Re: German exclaves in Belgium separated by a bicycle path from the rest of Germany

#35

Post by randallsquared »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #8
Faaak wrote: post #2

> There is no border control due to the Schengen Agreement, therefore daily life is not really impacted. That's the most interesting part to me. I cross the border every day to go to work. Yet, when a friend came to visit us and we we to the city, he couldn't believe that we were crossing a border that easily (France-Switzerland). It was literally an open fence with a sign welcoming you. It's really awesome when you…

People in the U.S. have forgotten the meaning of the word "state".

For the most part, the US "states" stopped being states in the political sense when the Articles were replaced by the Constitution, and deliberately so.

Re: German exclaves in Belgium separated by a bicycle path from the rest of Germany

#36

Post by rhodac »

jwr wrote: post #32

This is a good time to consider what a ridiculous concept "borders" are, especially within the EU. What makes land and people on one side of an arbitrary line so different from land and people on the other side of it? Borders are necessary because of power-hungry politicians: without borders, entire levels of governments would become unnecessary. This is why we hear so much about "patriotism" these days.

If you want to have government provided services funded by taxes, you need to determine who will be paying those taxes. Borders provide a clean division between the paying customers for a particular government's services, and those who are not.

Re: German exclaves in Belgium separated by a bicycle path from the rest of Germany

#37

Post by isostatic »

FigBug wrote: post #7
Faaak wrote: post #2

> There is no border control due to the Schengen Agreement, therefore daily life is not really impacted. That's the most interesting part to me. I cross the border every day to go to work. Yet, when a friend came to visit us and we we to the city, he couldn't believe that we were crossing a border that easily (France-Switzerland). It was literally an open fence with a sign welcoming you. It's really awesome when you…

This is what I was expecting when I drove between Switzerland-Italy in 2016. Except I was stopped, told to park, had my passport examined with with a loupe, and then was sent on my way. Are the borders back to normal now?

Switzerland’s be in schengen, but there’s still differences in customs - need to declare dutiable good etc.

Re: German exclaves in Belgium separated by a bicycle path from the rest of Germany

#38

Post by stevoski »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #25

Which reminds me of the rather young saying: “No fences make for excellent neighbors.” As to the bike path: that photo made my legs itch. Old train tracks are an excellent resource for bike paths, at least for recreational riding. They are flat, because trains are unable to climb anything more than 2% or so. Plus no cars, perfect width, and (because they are established rather recently) often perfectly smooth pavemen…

Can you tell us what cycle paths in Spain are on former rail trails? I live in Spain and would love to experience some of these.

Re: German exclaves in Belgium separated by a bicycle path from the rest of Germany

#40

Post by FigBug »

zaarn wrote: post #17
FigBug wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I was expecting when I drove between Switzerland-Italy in 2016. Except I was stopped, told to park, had my passport examined with with a loupe, and then was sent on my way. Are the borders back to normal now?

Random border checks are normal, even in Schengen, usually it's by Customs, sometimes it's highway/Autobahn police. Spotchecks are perfectly normal, though they've been elevated on some borders due to the refugee crisis (atleast in germany).

If you live in the EU are you supposed to carry your passport whenever you move between countries?
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