Borders

(I apologize in advance if this post is vague and overly academic. I find borders really fascinating from an academic standpoint, so naturally I'm going to say a lot of boring social-science-y things about them).

Having just yesterday visited the Drielandenpunt, or Three-Countries-Point, this seems like the appropriate time to talk a bit about what borders are like here in Europe. It's particularly interesting to someone living here in Maastricht, because we're really on the edge of the country- I have, quite literally, gone out for a walk to Belgium before.

  As a Canadian, I've always had a very particular idea about what borders mean- between Canada and the US, our own land neighbour (with the possible exception of 1.5 KM of rocky border with Greenland, of course), the border is marked by a several-thousand KM long strip cut out of the trees. You pull up in your car, often after a long wait, and are asked a seemingly arbitrary series of questions by a border guard. The experience varies significantly on who you get, and the mood they're in. Coming back, it's much the same, with Canada Customs asking about the things you've bought, as you search for receipts to prove your purchases. Sometimes, they randomly search trunks. Other times, you may have to pay a fee. One on one side of the border or the other, you get a clear image of the border as that imaginary line where Canada stops and the USA starts (or vice-versa, of course).

Most people are aware of the fact that that hasn't been the case in Europe for quite some time now. Thanks to the Schengen agreement, most of the countries in Europe no long have border controls between them; you're free to come and go as you please. With EU citizens having the right to live and work anywhere in the Union, most EU countries using the Euro as their currency, and the EU having made significant gains in achieving as "single common market" wherein it's fairly easy for companies to operate across borders, most of the familiar aspects of border crossing just aren't here. I don't have to change my money, the timezone spans most of the continent, and many of the products are the same across borders. There's not even always a sign that you've crossed the border- especially if you're going by train (I found this an interesting contrast to, for example, Nova Scotia, which has giant signs just to let you know you've entered a new county). You have to simply guess based on what languages are spoken and the designs of the train stations, or, if you really can't tell, just wait to get a text message from your provider telling you the rates in the country you've just entered.

 Here in Maastricht, you really get the feeling that people take full advantage of the open borders- the city is full of Belgian and German license plates, for example, as many work here and live elsewhere (and, no doubt, vice-versa). It's not uncommon for professors to teach both here and in Hasselt, Belgium (in my case, I have a professor who teaches at both back to back in the same morning), and I even had one tutor who taught here, lived in Belgium, but was from Italy. And, while in theory each country that uses the Euro makes its own coins (which are all valid anywhere in the Union, of course), in practice here in Maastricht my change always has Dutch, German, Belgian, and the occasional French and Luxembourg coins.

So, with all this said, it stands to reason that borders mean something a bit different here, and so as an exchange student, I experience them differently than I do at home. One very noticeable difference is, as I wrote about in an earlier post, language. Cross to the South, you're speaking French. Cross to the West, you're speaking Dutch. Cross to the East, you're speaking German. Often, this is basically an instant transition, and I can't help but wonder if it's confusing for motorists to suddenly face signs they can't understand. This was also one of the interesting parts of the Three Counties Point-signs and monuments were mostly in the Netherlands or Belgium, and switched languages as you cross the line. Another one you can look out for is the differences in how infrastructure looks. When we went to Luxembourg, for instance, we knew we'd entered the country because the train stations were of a different design than the Belgian ones (and slightly better maintained). Crossing on the highway, you'll often see the speed limit suddenly change (when a friend with a car took me to lunch in Germany, as soon as we hit the "Deutschland" sign he put the pedal basically to the floor, since the Autobahn has no real speed limit).

But, I want to put on my political science hat for a second and say that the way the border is constructed here has a lot more to do with the subtleties of the different European cultures. Going to Germany yesterday, for instance, one of the more noticeable differences (aside from a distinctly different way of designing the city) was the presence of bakeries everywhere, which sold products of a markedly different (and, according to my German friends, decidedly higher quality) variety.  The difference is, of course, that local tastes vary.

And so, the construction of the border here is a little more subtle. It doesn't happen with fences and invasive questioning and changing of your money and needing to remember to keep receipts for the inspection on the way home. It's also not always as evidently marked by differences in businesses, as many companies operate across the borders. Rather, it's more in the day-to-day. The fact that if you take a bus an hour down the road to Germany you'll find bakeries filled with pretzels and German speakers, and the widespread availability of apple flavoured soda and orange flavoured Coke. If you head in the other direction over to Belgium, however, you'll find fine local chocolates in the grocery stores and a mix of language compromises not present here in the Netherlands.

All of this, of course, is interesting for the exchange student to explore. The differences, for someone unfamiliar with the local cultures and unable to speak the local languages, don't pop out at you quite like a giant border station does,and so it certainly took me some time to grasp some of these aspects. It's also, obviously, very convenient for an exchange student to be sitting at a point where two other countries are easily accessed-for example, I've become greatly familiar with the Belgian train company's website for buying tickets , since Liège has been the gateway for a lot of my train journeys.

None of this easiness of crossing or the disappearing of the visible signs of the border, of course, takes away any of the fun of standing in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany all at the same time.