The town of Baarle-Hertog, located on the Belgium-Netherlands border, is an interesting geographical anomaly. Most of the time, national borders are clearly identifiable lines-- the US is on one side of the line, Mexico is on the other.

But in Baarle-Hertog, the border isn't a line at all. As seen in the map, parts of the Netherlands are sprinkled throughout this mostly Belgian town like raisins in a bag of trail mix. This makes for some rather odd results, as the Financial Times recently noted: "Apparently, women are able to choose the nationality of their child depending on the location of the room in which they give birth."

Wikipedia adds this charming tidbit: when Dutch restaurants used to have an earlier closing time than did their Belgian counterparts, restaurants on the border would simply move the tables to the Belgian side to stay open later.

[HT: BLDGBLOG]

"All news out of Africa is bad," says Paul Theroux in the opening of his 2003 book Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town, and while it's just the first sentence in a sweeping narrative that encounters misery and hope in equal measure, he has a point.

It is still difficult for Africa to elbow its way into the world's headlines without dragging some kind of disaster story along with it: Famine, AIDS, political violence, civil war.

It is always nice to encounter writing -- book length or journalism -- that finds other things to say about the Greenest Continent, writing that at the very least attempts to go beyond a fatalistic approach to Africa so often driven by major media outfits and pack journalism. Writing, in other words, that searches for, and ultimately finds, some context.

Theroux's book is one example, and the travel books of Jeffrey Tayler are another. The subtle novels of Alexander McCall Smith come to mind.

African narratives in daily journalism are harder to find, put they are out there (one that immediately springs to mind is Boston Globe travel writer Tom Haines' brilliant dispatch from Sudan a few years back).

The work of author and adventurer Jon Bowermaster, a frequent contributor to National Geographic and National Geographic Adventure, is a part of this second group.

Bowermaster is currently writing a series of dispatches as he makes his way along the coast of Northwest Africa.

I like them because they read like vignettes, each one a picture with a few characters at their center: Shopkeepers in Casablanca, fisherman in Dakar. And he's touching on issues that do not usually make it to newspaper front pages: Overfishing in Senegal, the region's desertification, the questionable legacy of Thor Heyerdahl in the Canary Islands.

In many of these dispatches you will hear the voices of Africans, a nice reminder that this troubled continent still has a lot to say.

Give them a read.

Two months ago I went rappelling in the Hocking Hills State Forest with Earth, Water, Rock Adventures Ltd.

I was pretty proud of myself that all I ended up with was a scrape on my calf when I slipped on some moss on my first time down the rock face.I could have scrapped a lot more if I had followed the thrill of nude rock climbing.

There is a trend where people cast off their clothes to experience nature from high places in the buff. The trend seems to have started in California, but has been transported to Great Britain as well.

The friend who sent me the article to the naked Barbie on the dash board story sent me this article about nude rock climbing. All I could think of when I read this story was that Jerry Seinfeld episode where he had a girl friend who insisted on being nude as much as possible. Jerry wasn't too thrilled, particularly when she attempted to open a pickle jar.

Nude rock climbing would probably really set Jerry on edge. It certainly brings being naked to a higher level.

Dean Fidelman, a rock-climber and the guy who took this picture has made a calendar dedicated to this endeavor. The project is called Stone Nudes.

His work reminds me a bit of Spencer Tunick's, another artist who sees the human form as one that lends itself well to being photographed sans clothes in nature. There is a simplicity that is very alluring.

I've never put an animal in an airline's care before, but I have friends who have. Friends of ours shipped their dogs to and from Singapore. One person took a parrot and another shipped two cats. All went well in these instances.

The situation where the dog was lost by United Airlines this past week is not common, I would guess, otherwise it wouldn't have made it to the national news. Grant gave a Gadling heads up, and this article on ABCNews this past Monday outlines more specifics about the unfortunate situation when Jeddah, the beloved dog of John and Ronia Weisner went missing at Dulles International Airport after only an hour in the airline's care.

If you are wondering what the statistics are for problems when shipping pets, and the airlines involved with the mishaps, check out this PDF file to Air Travel and Consumer Report published by the Office of Aviation Enforcement and Proceedings: Aviation Consumer Protection Division.

May 2008 was just posted this month. On page 38, you'll find the recent stats for pet troubles. Here's the summary:

No animals were lost in May.

Two were injured. (Alaska-1; Skywest-1)

Four died. (Continnental- 3; United-1)

The chart doesn't list the specifics of the incidents, but you can click on the airline name in the chart in order to get the report summaries.

In the Weisner's case, I can't imagine what it must be like to have such a significant change already in ones life such as a move to Saudi Arabia for a year only to have it start out with a missing dog.

Last summer when we were in Seattle we missed out on the public toilets. After reading about them in this New York Times article, I can't say I'm sorry.

Five automated public toilets were opened in 2004, but one detail was overlooked when deciding where to put them. Location. Location. Location. As it turns out, the public toilets were put where too many drug dealers and transients hang out.

Even though the toilets are supposed to clean themselves after every use, the traffic was the messy type and too much for a self-cleaning toilet to handle. The trash left behind by the users created a situation where the automatic cleaning system didn't function. Plus, the toilets were used for other types of business besides toilet business. Drug deals, prostitution, smoking crack--that kind of thing.

Eventually, though, the toilets became so nasty, even crack addicts didn't go in them.

Since the toilets cost Seattle $5 million dollars, the city is interested in recouping some of the loss. They are up for sale on eBay for $89,000 a piece. I know someone who turned a Port-A-John into public art with decorations. Perhaps an art museum might want to take the initiative and buy one.

The problem with the toilets isn't the toilets, it's the people who use them. Because other cities have tried similar toilets, Seattle's problem has created a stir.

Europeans have managed to use public toilets just fine. Folks in the U.S. are trying to figure it out.

The one in the photograph is in London. According to ILoveButter who posted this on Flickr, it costs money to use the toilet. However, it is very clean.

When we pulled into the driveway of our friends' house in St. Cloud, Minnesota, as part of our Great American Road trip to Montana, we didn't have any plans except to visit. The last time we saw them was at our house in Columbus, and since then they had moved from State College, Pennsylvania to St. Cloud.

As with any visit, there's always something new to find out. about the town where friends land. People who live there know the insider info that may not show up in a guidebook. Such was the case when I found out were were having yak meat for dinner.

I've been to Nepal where yaks seem as common as cows. While there, I never had yak meat. As it turns out Hoopers' Christmas Tree Farm in Cold Spring, Minnesota has a herd of 60 or so yak making this the largest yak herd in the eastern part of the U.S. Who knew?

When traveling time zones, it's a good idea to remember that TV schedules change. When I sat down to watch the 3rd episode of "I Survived a Japanese Game Show," in St. Cloud, Minnesota where were were visiting friends on our way to Montana, I forgot it was Central Time.

The show comes on ABC at 8:00 p.m. in St. Cloud and not at 9:00 like in Columbus. The show had just ended. We proceeded to watch the sunset and drink wine.

Watching online a day later in Bismarck, North Dakota at the Seven Seas Best Western was just as entertaining. To catch you up for tonight, here's the recap. If you can't head to Japan any time soon, here's one way to feel like you're there in an unusual sort of way.

What I liked so much during the first episode is back. There was more about Japan and the contestants reactions to being in the country. Everyone loves being in Japan.

There was also more footage about what it's like to be on a Japanese game show. Less time was spent on the contestants' chatter about their strategies to win, therefore the bickering was minimal which left more time for more interesting footage.

Another positive change in round three was Mamasan's increased TV time. I particularly liked observing the contestants reactions to her. The hugs, the thank-yous, the being ever so polite, even when served a gritty version of green tea that isn't what one likes is so typical of trying to be a gracious guest in another country.

The first mishap was when we nailed a possum in Illinois east of Chicago the first night of our road trip to Montana. The critter was lumbering across the interstate about 10:30 p.m. That was a sad moment.

Thursday, driving to and from Regent, North Dakota we had several sad moments. Honestly, there are some things that can't be avoided.

I already posted about the two pheasants we hit. The chipmunk and the blackbird came later.

We didn't hit them all at once, but over the course of several miles. Such is one of the realities of traveling on small two-lane highways--but this was ridiculous. Particularly when two raccoons made a mad dash in front of us as I was typing the previous sentence. The second one didn't make it.

With each thump, I'm shouting out from the passenger seat, a strangled "Arggh!" Seriously, it was a nightmare. "That's one way to damage a car," I said.

"It's not like I'm trying to hit them," said my husband. It's true, he wasn't, and swerving too much is dangerous. He pointed out the deep ditch on the side of the road.

Every time John Ur covers a state via its cinematic hot spots in his series "Cinematic Road Trip" for Intelligent Travel, I look to see which movies I've seen and what spots I know. It's always a pleasure.

This week Ur hit Ohio. Ohio, as he found, is diverse. He did skip over Columbus. I'll have to think about a movie that may have been filmed there. Columbus is not dull, but can slide under ones radar. Cleveland, however is not easy to miss. Christmas Story, one of Cleveland's most well known films is one of my favorites and one that Ur covers.

Ur also hits Cincinnati. I am partial to Cincinnati since I grew up going here as a child and I know it well. However, I wasn't aware that parts of Traffic was filmed here. Or perhaps I noticed this and forgot.

I do know of a couple Ohio locations on the silver screen that Ur missed. One can't include everything, so this is no slight on Ur. He always does a fine job.

One movie is The Shawshank Redemption. The prison outside of Mansfield, the abandoned Ohio State Reformatory was one of the main locations. A friend of mine's father was one of the extras.

Another film with Ohio scenes is Rain Man. One of Cincinnati's most spectacular buildings, at least it's my favorite, is Union Terminal. Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise spent some time here while looking for alternative transportation to California. The murals you see in the background as they walked through were done as a WPA project. The building is now mostly a museum center.

Another shot in this film is when the pair are in a car going from Cincinnati across the Ohio River on the Roebling Bridge. The bridge, also known as "The Singing Bridge" because of the sound it makes when cars go across, leads to Covington, Kentucky.

Thursday afternoon we turned off of I-94 at exit 72 for Regent, North Dakota for a detour. Three years ago, we became so enamored with this stretch of two-lane road called "The Enchanted Highway" that we decided it was worth the forty or so miles out of our way for a return visit. Our goal was Billings, Montana by 10:30 p.m.

Every five miles or so along the 32 miles to Regent, there is a large scrap metal sculpture grouping. A tin family, schools of fish, grasshoppers, Teddy Roosevelt on a horse, and a pheasant family. They are the largest scrap metal sculptures in the world. They are superb.

Back in 1989, Gary Greff, a former teacher and high school principal, came up with the idea of this series of sculptures as a way to draw people to Regent. It's worked with us twice now. The first time I heard an interview with him on National Public Radio three years ago. As I listened to the interview, I thought heading through North Dakota to see the sculptures was a fine idea.