As part of my stay in the Dutch city of Utrecht, I took a trip today to a town that straddles the border between the Netherlands and Germany. The Dutch part is known as Kerkrade and the German Herzogenrath.
I walked what might be called in English New Street, which has the international border along its centre. It is named Nieuwstraat in Dutch side and Neustrasse in German.
For me, there are obvious but less potent parallels with Albury-Wodonga, where I grew up on the New South Wales-Victoria state border in Australia.
The border I crisscrossed today meant a great deal during World War I and World War II, when it was fortified by the Germans. Then until the Schengen Area agreement came into force in 1995, there was a separate road on either side of a low wall. This forced vehicles to use the official border crossings while allowing pedestrians easier passage.
I looked at a sample of the low wall that is embedded as a memorial in a roundabout on the actual border.
The national differences and regional geographic similarities would be apparent in the dialects that are spoken on either side. But I had to confine my observations to street signs, and the Dutch product range in the Aldi store on the Kerkrade side and the German in its Lidl rival in Herzogenrath.
What is most interesting is the geopolitical context of the rise of nationalism and right-wing politics, against the EU's philosophical and actual de-emphasis of borders.
In the past few years, the Germans have reintroduced border checks. A few weeks ago I had to show my passport to German border guards who boarded my train as I entered Germany.
About ten years ago, I visited the Museum of Europe in the village of Schengen on the border of France, Germany and Luxembourg. It was a celebration of the dissolution of meaningful borders, but this was beginning to be questioned by many Europeans with migration crisis emerging.
Today I wondered whether the wall along Nieuwstraat/Neustrasse might be reinstated within the next few years.