South of Maastricht, along the Dutch-Belgium border, are three small pieces of land on the ‘wrong side’ of the river. After physically straightening the river Maas in the 1960’s, which was the natural border between the two countries, the border line was actually never changed. This means that still today, two pieces of Belgium land are only connected to the Netherlands and one piece of Dutch land is only connected to Belgium. Since there is water in-between these pieces of land and their mainland, they are difficult to reach for example by the national police of both countries. The two countries have agreed to reposition the border back to the deepest point of the river and thereby exchanging the few pieces of land. This exchange will probably happen 1st of January 2018.

For this upcoming exchange I decided to donate a monument to this special Dutch peninsula, stranded on the other side of the river. The Netherlands will then unknowingly ‘give’ this, more than two-meter-tall sculpture, to Belgium when the exchange takes place.

Since this peninsula is hard to reach, one can best or most easily visit the monument via Google Maps. You will find the sculpture by dragging the orange street view puppet (on the right bottom corner on the screen) and drop it on the blue dot in the middle of the peninsula.