Garçon sans frontières

One of our holiday snaps, taken in Baarle-Hertog/Baarle-Nassau a municipality where, as a man from the BBC helpfully explained, 'you have little bits of Holland* inside little bits of Belgium, which are, in turn, inside The Netherlands itself.' Here he is, explaining more:


This summer, like millions of other people in Europe, we travelled through France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and Denmark without once being being stopped at a single border, or having our documents checked. It's the sort of thing those millions of Europeans have come to take for granted. Which, given the history of Europe, is a pretty astonishing achievement on the part of all nations concerned.

But, all of a sudden, borders are no joke.

The walls are going up all over Europe.


*It should be 'The Netherlands', although calling it 'Holland' is apparently not quite such a grievous mistake as non-Brits mistakenly referring to the whole of the UK as 'England.'