It's only a few days until Oct. 3rd, German "Day of Unity", a holiday in Germany 🇩🇪 celebrating reunification.
A fitting reason for us to make Germany the focus if this week's #geoweirdness thread
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OpenCage 👉🌍
in reply to OpenCage 👉🌍 • • •OpenCage 👉🌍
in reply to OpenCage 👉🌍 • • •3/ First up, the Germany 🇩🇪 / Belgium 🇧🇪 border is probably the strangest in all of Europe.
Belgium owns a former railway line (now cycle path) that cuts through Germany - as we covered in our Belgium #geoweirdness thread a few
months ago:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vennbahn
en.osm.town/@opencage/11004877…
former railway line in Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)OpenCage 👉🌍
in reply to OpenCage 👉🌍 • • •4/ Germany 🇩🇪 has one exclave, the city of Büsingen am Hochrhein is entirely surrounded by Switzerland🇨🇭
For time zone nerds: tiny Büsingen (pop. ~1,500) has it's own entry in the IANA timezone database:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_…
#geoweirdness
Germany uses CET/CEST
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)OpenCage 👉🌍
in reply to OpenCage 👉🌍 • • •5/ Germany 🇩🇪 contains one "pene-exclave" (practical exclave). Due to mountains the Austrian 🇦🇹 village of Jungholz can only practically be reached via German roads. The village has both German and Austrian postal codes.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungholz
#geoweirdness
municipality in Reutte District, Tyrol, Austria
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)OpenCage 👉🌍
in reply to OpenCage 👉🌍 • • •6/ Today Germany 🇩🇪 is in political union with its EU 🇪🇺neighbors (except Switzerland🇨🇭, of course), but there is still one border dispute with the Netherlands 🇳🇱 about the course of the border at the mouth of the Ems river, as covered in our thread on border disputes.
en.osm.town/@opencage/11107975…
#geoweirdness
OpenCage 👉🌍
in reply to OpenCage 👉🌍 • • •7/ This year will mark 33 years since reunification, when East joined West.
Much less well known is the "mini-reunification" when the Saar protectorate rejoined Germany. Following WWII it was a separate legal entity until 1957 (with own Olympics team)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saar_Pro…
#geoweirdness
French protectorate over German Saarland, 1947–56
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)OpenCage 👉🌍
in reply to OpenCage 👉🌍 • • •8/ In 2016 it was discovered that Germany's borders had changed. Due to the shift of a river, Germany gained about 500 sqm in a remote forest from the Czech Republic 🇨🇿
bigthink.com/strange-maps/germ…
#geoweirdness
How Germany Annexed Czech Territory… in 2016
Frank Jacobs (Big Think)OpenCage 👉🌍
in reply to OpenCage 👉🌍 • • •9/ You may be surprised to learn of the part of Germany 🇩🇪 that was once British 🇬🇧. The North Sea island of Helgoland belonged to Britain until 1890 when it was traded for Zanzibar (Now Tanzania 🇹🇿, then part of German East Africa)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heligola…
#geoweirdness
1890 British-German treaty
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)OpenCage 👉🌍
in reply to OpenCage 👉🌍 • • •10/ That's it for our look at the #geoweirdness of Germany 🇩🇪
Thanks for reading and boosting 🙏. What did we overlook?
We have more threads about specific countries, geocoding, etc on our blog.
Enjoy: blog.opencagedata.com/geothrea…
OpenCage Geothreads
blog.opencagedata.comOpenCage 👉🌍
in reply to OpenCage 👉🌍 • • •11/ Bonus #geoweirdness toot - post reunification Germany 🇩🇪 has 16 Bundesländer (states).
Occasionally though you will hear of the "17th Bundesland", a reference to favorite German tourism destination: the 🇪🇸 Spanish island of Mallorca
OpenCage 👉🌍
in reply to OpenCage 👉🌍 • • •