In Netherlands, Belgium and Germany – At the same time :)

For the latter part of our Europe trip, my sister and I flew to Cologne and stayed with our friends and hosts –  Priya (P) and Jean (J). Meeting P in Europe was finally a long wished for dream come true, because I had been planning to visit her for the last 7 years, but for some reason or the other, plans just didn’t materialise.

P is now finally settled in Vaals (pronounced as Faals) which is a beautiful small town in Netherlands and on the border of Germany, Netherlands and Belgium. This was also a base for us to explore all the nearby towns and cities.

Vaals is a small picturesque town and looks to be just out of a Jane Austin novel except the modern touch and gadgets. It has small independent houses, hills, farms (with actual farming), lavender growing like grass and horses all around.

Vaals is well-known for the Three Land Point and for the Mount Vaals. You can reach both these points post a short trek or a drive.

We decided to trek up to this point and walked through a beautiful small jungle. There are small animals in this jungle including deer etc but we were assured that there are no lions. Also, all along the treks we saw the old border stones with country symbols. Its fun to see them as there are quite a few changes in the border lines and you can see this with the movement of these boulders.

Vaalsberg  or “Mount Vaals” is a hill and the highest point in the European part of the Netherlands.

Mount Vaals

This also the location of the Three Land Point or the common point between Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.  This common point / summit is referred to as Drielandenpunt (“Three-Country Point”) in Dutch, or Dreiländereck (“Three-Country Corner”) in German, or Trois Frontières (“Three Borders”) in French.  We had a nice time jumping all around here and deciding at that stroke of a second as to which country we wanted to be in. 🙂

Three Land Point – this pic courtesy wikipedia

There is a children’s park, a few places to eat, a viewing point etc around here. When we had gone there was also an open air exhibition on alternate ideas and designs of housing. These houses were quite creative but also quite scary (as they looked that anytime they will just crash on us).

However it was fun to spend an evening at this point of three countries. .

Also, P and J were the perfect hosts during our trip. They drove us all around, took us to unusual places and ensured we had a fabulous time. Thanks guys as our trip wouldn’t have been half as much fun without you.. 🙂