Hello and Grüezi!
It’s a ridiculously sunny day in February and I’m in Switzerland.
Or am I in Germany?
Huh. That’s weird.
Ok. There’s a German post office. There's a car with a German numberplate.
And that is a very German signpost.
But if this is Germany, then why don’t they use Euros?
Why are there Swiss flags everywhere?
And why do they use the Swiss greeting "Grüezi" instead of the German "Guten Tag"?
Welcome to confusing Büsingen.
This is the small town of Schaffhausen in northern Switzerland.
It lies on the river Rhein, and has an attractive historic centre,
including the 14th century Haus Zum Ritter with its exquisitely painted frescos,
although the town is perhaps best known for the nearby spectacular Rheinfall,
the biggest waterfall in Europe in terms of waterflow.
And of course, we’re not here to see any of that.
What we’re interested in is this.
The strange little exclave of Büsingen Am Hochrhein, home to just under 1500 Germans,
who are cut off from the rest of Germany
and surrounded by Switzerland.
It’s a ten-minute bus ride from the centre of Schaffhausen,
or on a day like this, a lovely 30-minute walk along the river.
And despite signs saying goodbye from Schaffhausen and welcome to Büsingen,
there is almost nothing to tell you that you’re entering another country;
the only clue is on the other side of this sign, where the letters CH tell you
that Switzerland is back that way.
In fact, the invisible border runs straight down this side road.
That means that the Swiss residents on the left pay lower income tax,
but their German neighbours on the right get a tax break on pensions.
Büsingen has an average age of over 50.
So what’s the story here, how did a small village inside Switzerland end up being German?
Well it all starts with a family argument in 1693.
In 1693, Büsingen is under the control of an Austrian noble called Eberhard Im Thurn
who lives in this house here.
The problems begin when he falls out with his protestant family because they think he’s
secretly Catholic.
He ends up getting kidnapped by his own cousins and taken to Schaffhausen, in protestant Switzerland,
where he’s trialled and sentenced to life in prison.
It took six years and the threat of Austria invading Schaffhausen to get him out.
A few decades later when things had calmed down a bit,
Austria decided to sell most of the land around here to the Swiss;
but they held on to Büsingen itself,
for basically no reason other than pure childish spite.
They subsequently lost it in 1805 after defeat to Napoleon
and it ended up in the hands of Württemburg
which eventually became part of modern Germany,
but the point is today, 300 years later,
it’s still not Swiss.
Or is it?
Because although legally this is German territory,
culturally and economically it’s pretty Swiss.
And I don’t just mean that the locals say Grüezi;
we’re in the Swiss customs zone
which means there are checks on exports to Germany and the EU;
and look what happens when I pay for a drink.
This is the restaurant Waldheim, tucked just inside the border at the other end of the
exclave.
In summer, when they put tables outside,
you can order food in Germany,
pay for it in Swiss francs,
sit on a chair in Germany
and eat it off a table in Switzerland.
It’s enough to confuse anyone.
In 1918, at the end of the First World War,
a referendum was held here in which 96% of voters
voted to leave Germany and become part of Switzerland.
But the resulting negotiations came to a halt
when Switzerland wasn’t able to offer Germany anything suitable in return.
So Büsingen remained German,
and the people ended up just kind of pretending to be Swiss instead.
The local German authorities even organise a festival every summer on Swiss National Day.
Imagine politicians distracting people with flags and festivals
because they couldn’t deliver on the promises they made in a ref
oh look it’s an alpaca!
If you’d like to visit confusing Büsingen,
and maybe even have drink so you can say you’ve been boozing in Büsingen,
it’s a short bus ride from Schaffhausen and a ticket costs about 5 Francs.
Despite what Google maps says, there’s no railway station here,
turns out it’s just two old railway cars in a field
and some camels.
Within the exclave there’s a marked trail
which gives you a tour of all the sights
with panels to tell you the story behind them.
I didn’t walk the whole route,
but from what I saw it’s fairly flat and should be accessible for most people,
although for the panels, it will help if you can read German, I guess.
Anyway, here’s some more alpacas, thanks for watching and I’ll see you soon.