Towns where the border runs through homes: Barle, Sebatik, Derby Line

Imagine cooking breakfast in one country and sitting down to eat it in another. Take one step from your bedroom doorway and you’re still at home yet already abroad. For some towns, that isn’t fantasy but the morning routine, because the national boundary cuts straight through people’s homes.

Where does the boundary run — on the ground or across the rug?

Most international borders present themselves as clear, formal lines: barriers, flags, officers. Yet there are places where that neat idea unravels. In a handful of towns and villages, the dividing line runs right through buildings — houses, shops, even libraries.

The best-known example is the town of Barle, split between the Netherlands and Belgium. There the border behaves less like a line and more like a web, looping along streets, crossing courtyards and fences, and even threading through the middle of homes.

A house half Belgian, half Dutch

In Barle, a living room can sit in one country while the bedroom belongs to the other. What counts is the position of the front door. Local rules say that if the door opens onto the Belgian side, the home is considered Belgian — even if half the structure stands in the Netherlands.

To keep everyone oriented, special markers are painted on streets and even inside buildings: white crosses and the letters “NL” (Netherlands) and “B” (Belgium). Sometimes the markings run right across a café floor or straight through someone’s bedroom.

Where else this happens

Barle isn’t the only dot on the map where houses straddle a frontier. On Sebatik Island between Malaysia and Indonesia, there is a home with the kitchen in one country and the living room in the other.

And in the North American town of Derby Line, on the border between the United States and Canada, a library and a theater are also bisected by the boundary, with visitors stepping from one country to the other simply by crossing the hall.

How people live in such homes

Life on the line demands attention to small details. In Barle, two post offices operate, and some houses carry two addresses and two mailboxes. Residents pay for utilities and taxes depending on which country their home is in.

Fortunately, in Europe these boundaries cause few headaches: the Netherlands and Belgium belong to the European Union and the Schengen Area, where strict controls are absent. People move back and forth without worrying about a fine for one step too many — a small proof that policy can make daily life either frictionless or fussy.

Elsewhere, where relations between neighbors are more complicated, such houses could easily spark disputes. Yet on Sebatik, people still find ways to live side by side, despite a border running through the middle of a home.

Tourism and curiosity from around the world

These towns often turn into quirky attractions. In Barle, you can watch the frontier slice through a restaurant or a shop window. Visitors happily pose with one foot in the Netherlands and the other in Belgium.

Locals have long grown used to the attention. They even make souvenirs celebrating their unusual way of life.

What this says about us and the world

When a boundary runs through a home, it stops being just a line on a map. It becomes part of someone’s daily routine. People here don’t split life into “there” and “here”; they simply live — often in two countries at once.

Places like these invite a thought: perhaps, in time, borders won’t feel like barriers but like meeting points. Where walls once stood, bridges may appear — even if they happen to run straight through the kitchen.