Imagine your house appearing on the local tourist board’s list of things to see and experience — complete with instructions to photograph it and share the image online with a specific hashtag. To me, that sounds like a curse. But people are different.
Somewhere in the northern part of Belgium, in a small town called Dreef, there is a house like this. I feel slightly sorry for its owner, because even I — someone with no real connection to Belgium — have travelled out of my way to see it. Not because the house is remarkable, not because a celebrity lives there, but simply because it happens to stand at the very northernmost tip of Belgium.
And when I say stands, I mean it quite literally. The border between Belgium and the Netherlands runs straight through the garden.
It seems that after a Belgian TV presenter visited the place as part of one of his shows, the house became a minor tourist attraction. Around that time, a sign was attached to the wall stating the coordinates and confirming that this is indeed the northernmost point of Belgium. What makes it even more curious is that the house directly opposite, on the other side of the street, is already in the Netherlands. The border passes just south of the Belgian house — but I suppose it has to run somewhere.
I happened to drive past this place on a random summer day. I had started the day in Eindhoven, with no intention of visiting Belgium again, having been there just the day before — except, of course, for this one place. Technically, it would even have been possible to see the northernmost point without entering Belgium at all, as the very tip lies on the northern side of the house, inside the garden. But the only available parking spot was on the Belgian side, which turned this into the shortest possible drive into Belgium: just a few metres.
It was a sunny day, yet all the curtains were closed. No wonder. I did find myself wondering whether this was to protect the residents from curious strangers like me, or whether they were simply at work — or perhaps on holiday, enjoying some peace far away from their own coordinates.
After a brief moment of admiration for the neatly kept house and its impressively tall plant fence, it was time to leave.