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@opencage@en.osm.townThere's no better way to wind down on the weekend than with a little #geoweirdness
For this week's thread we thought we'd look at a topic that is an old geo favourite: enclaves and exclaves
1/n
2/ First, definitions: an exclave is a part of a territory that is geographically separated from the main territory.
Example: Alaska 
is separated by Canada 
and water from the rest of the US. For an exclave to also be an enclave it needs to be entirely surrounded by another territory. So Alaska is an exclave, but not an enclave. #geoweirdness
3/ Let’s look at some enclave/exclave examples.
Some entire countries are enclaves, for example Lesotho 
is entirely surrounded by South Africa 
4/ A famous historic enclave was the “island” of West Berlin, entirely surrounded by East Germany until East and West were reunited in 1990. #geoweirdness
5/ A German 
enclave that still exists is the town of Büsingen, entirely surrounded by Switzerland 
#geoweirdness Büsingen uses both German and Swiss postal systems.
6/ A well known exclave is Kaliningrad, part of Russia 
located on the Baltic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad_Oblast
7/ A famous “pene-exclave” (hard to reach without going through another country) is the Kleinwalsertal, an Austrian 
valley only really reachable from Germany due to the steep Alps.
9/ Probably the most famous enclave in the world is Baarle-Hertog, a Belgian 
town in the Netherlands 
with enclaves inside enclaves
10/ The people in Baarle-Hertog have learned to get along, but enclaves can also sometimes be a source of tension, as seen recently in the conflict between Armenia 
and Azerbaijan 
11/ Happily, there are other ways to solve things. In 2015 India 
and Bangladesh 
agreed to an exchange several 100 tiny enclaves to simplify things. About 50,000 people changed citizenship as a result.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93Bangladesh_enclaves
12/ If you like this sort of geo wackiness we highly recommend the Strange Maps blog: https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/
Here’s a GeoHipster interview with Frank Jacobs, the man behind the blog: https://geohipster.com/2015/03/16/frank-jacobs-im-in-the-vinyl-section-of-the-shop-listening-to-some-old-mercators/
Frank does a great job exposing the joy of geo. #geoweirdness
13/ Final bonus exclave, one for our Australian 
friends: There's the Jervis Bay territory on the coast but administered by the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). The ACT is an enclave of its own, completely surrounded by New South Wales.
14/ We hope you enjoyed our look at enclave and exclave #geoweirdness. Thanks for reading (and sharing).
We have many more threads about specific countries, border disputes, geocoding, etc listed on our blog. Most still on twitter, but over time we are moving them here to masto.
