Whilst I have been travelling to different parts of Europe I’ve noticed something.   Some places have very formal looking borders with a checkpoint with police or army and some places you can go on a bus across and blink and not see a tiny sign that marks another nation.

I don’t see borders and checkpoints as a bad thing, even if you are friends with a neighbouring nation its necessary to check who comes through and get information about the movements of criminals from another jurisdiction.   Often its necessary to keep a watch on tobacco and alcohol or illicit drugs.   It could also be that you need to pay a toll on certain roads.

This isn’t an EU/not EU thing, as while I write this my government of the UK right now (16/1/2019) is a bit of a mess with a future outside of the European Union not quite planned.

I decided to try an experiment because I am a nerd and work with data, I decided to use Google Streetmap view and a big chart to show information of what it looks like to cross from one country to another.

Here are some examples of some oddities;

TOP This is what happens when you from Spain to Gibraltar, a tiny piece of Britain.  I visited there in 2015, a year before Brexit vote so I was surprised to see such a military connection between modern two European places, but it seems the Gib government and Spain have fraught relations for years.

This is Moldova and Romania, not been to either of these places.    Both countries are poor, and this is as close as Google cars will take me.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rU0iAvXX6TuS5flRfQnvq1WnmChaml3tXvLPJSI4Ezw/edit#gid=0 

If you want to use this on your web site, I rather you just link to this if you could thanks, rather copy the whole thing.

I’ve not included UK, Ireland, Malta, Cyprus or Iceland as I was only interested in seeing land borders.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rU0iAvXX6TuS5flRfQnvq1WnmChaml3tXvLPJSI4Ezw/edit#gid=0 

Some caveats.  1. Roads that go from one nation to another chosen at random.  2. Germany doesn’t have any Google street map view data as their government had a falling out with Google.  3.  Russia shown is the “little” Russia which has the city of Kalingrad.  4. The Pink values that show two different gov borders are a bit experimental as don’t get a good look from GSMV.  4. No confidential information exposed, only what Google tells me.  5. There is probably some mistakes and improvements that could be made.  

Feel free to comment.