被最疯狂国界线分割的欧洲小镇

At De Biergrens beer shop, you can walk in from the Netherlands through one door and walk out into Belgium through another. There are two telephones, one connected to the Belgian telecom system and one plugged into the Dutch. There are even two cash registers, at opposite ends of the shop — one in each country.

在De Biergrens啤酒屋，你能从荷兰的一个门走进去，从另一门出去走到比利时。那里有两部电话，一部连接的是比利时的电信系统，另一部连接的是荷兰的电信系统。店的两侧甚至有两个收银台，每个国家一个。

That’s par for the course in Baarle, a village about 65 miles south of Amsterdam that is sliced and diced by what is probably the world’s craziest stretch of international border. It zigzags up and down streets and right through the middle of stores like De Biergrens, and even people’s living rooms and gardens.

在阿姆斯特丹以南约65英里的村庄巴勒(Baarle)，这是常有的事。这里被也许是世界上最疯狂的国界线分割。国界线曲折地穿过街道，穿过De Biergrens这样的店铺，甚至穿过人们的客厅和花园。

The bewildering layout dates from the 12th century, when wars and land spats kept morphing the dividing line between the holdings of rival noble families. When Belgium seceded from the Netherlands in 1830, those untidy lines hardened into a national frontier, but they left a number of enclaves: isolated bits of one nation’s territory surrounded by the land of the other. Today, Baarle lies within the Netherlands, but it has 22 Belgian enclaves that, in turn, have seven Dutch enclaves within them.

这种令人眼花缭乱的格局可以追溯到12世纪，当时战争和土地争端不断改变对立贵族领地之间的分界线。1830年比利时脱离荷兰之后，这些不规则的分界线变成了国界线，但它们留下了许多飞地：被另一个国家的领土包围的孤立的小块土地。如今，巴勒位于荷兰境内，但它有22块比利时飞地，而这些飞地里还有7块荷兰飞地。

Confused? Baarle has a system to help. The border is marked on the town’s pavements with white crosses and metal studs. Outside Den Engel, a cafe, visitors can stand with a glass of wine in the Netherlands and lean over a white cross to drink it in Belgium. When closing times differed in the two countries, divided restaurants would move their tables to the Belgian side of the room when last call came on the Dutch side.

是不是很让人迷惑？巴勒有一套系统来解决这个问题。小镇路面上用白色十字和金属钉标明国界线。在Den Engel咖啡馆外，游客们可以站在荷兰领土上拿着一杯红酒，倾斜身子越过白色十字线，在比利时领空饮用。两国的打烊时间不同时，如果荷兰那边的打烊时间已到，被国界线分割的餐馆就把桌子挪到比利时那一侧。

Addresses go by the voordeurregel, or front-door rule: If it opens on the Belgian side of a street, you live in Belgium, wherever the rest of the house may lie. (For easy identification, the national flag is usually painted next to the house number.) A shop like De Biergrens, with entrances in both countries, gets an address for each door.

地址是按照前门原则来确定的：如果前门开在街道的比利时一侧，那你就是住在比利时，不管房子的其余部分在哪里（为了方便辨认，门牌号旁边通常会画一个国旗）。像De Biergrens这样在两个国家都有入口的店铺，会给每个门弄一个地址。

The intertwined halves of the town — formally, the Belgian parts are Baarle-Hertog and the Dutch parts Baarle-Nassau — have separate town halls, churches and fire departments, but they recently merged their police departments. None of this bothers people at De Biergrens, which is slightly more in the Netherlands but sells mostly Belgian beer. “Yes, we have two addresses, two telephones and two cash registers,” said Karlean Vermonden, an employee. “But it’s not a problem. That’s just a way of life here.”

小镇互相纠缠在一起的两部分（以前，比利时部分被称为巴勒海托赫[Baarle-Hertog]，荷兰部分被称为巴勒纳绍[Baarle-Nassau]）各自设立市政厅、教堂和消防局，不过前不久警察局合并了。但是，De Biergrens啤酒屋一点也没觉得困扰，这家店在荷兰的部分稍大一些，但主要是售卖比利时啤酒。“是的，我们有两个地址、两部电话和两个收银台，”店员卡琳•弗蒙顿(Karlean Vermonden)说，“不过，这没什么问题。这就是这儿的生活方式。”