Take Monaco, for instance, where the cameras approach the eastern border only to be greeted with this giant abstract sculpture at the crossing (or is that just Monaco giving a massive middle-finger to Google’s camera?).

The western entrance to Monaco is quite stunning, with the road descending into the principality as cliffs loom overhead.

Moving south into the Pyrenees, we reach the border of Andorra, where we can sneak a peek into the ski resort of Pas de la Casa, including some oddly-coloured apartments on the hillside.

For sheer impressiveness, however, it’s hard to beat the sight of the Rock of Gibraltar looming over the Spanish border at La Linea while a thunderstorm prepares to hit overhead:

The prize for ‘Most Ornate Entrance Captured on Street View’ might have to go to the border between Rimini, Italy and Serravalle, San Marino, where the microstate has constructed a pedestrian overpass and an observation tower for tourists, leading into a major shopping district. The other main entrance to San Marino would probably be described as ‘quaint’ by comparison.

The absurdly complicated Dutch-Belgian border at Baarle (documented previously on Google Sightseeing) is likely to have presented special challenges to the Street View team. However, they have cleverly managed to avoid publishing any images captured on Belgian soil – despite examples such as this, where the camera car must drive from Holland at one end of the block, across a tiny sliver of Belgium, and back to Holland at the other end.

Baarle’s not the only town cut in half in Street View. Here’s a place where you park in France to dine at a cafe in Luxembourg:

Near the tri-point of Italy, Austria and Slovenia, we get this multi-national flag arrangement at an old Austrian customs building. Further into the Alps, the Street View car camera ends its trip at the ski resort of Nassfeld, where one of the ski lifts lies right next to a field of grazing cattle.

The lone glimpse of Russian soil captured so far on Street View is the view across a small lake from Norway (the only place you can actually drive south into Russia from), where we get a blurry view of a building on a hill overlooking the lake. Hmm, a regular house, or a Cold War spy shanty? You be the judge…

South Africa is the only African country so far visited by Street View, but sadly most of the border shots are not particularly notable. For example, the images simply stop by a fence on the middle of the road at the border with Swaziland, while the border with Botswana couldn’t be any more different, merely possessing a single stop sign.

We end our forbidden borderland odyssey with a glimpse from Singapore across the Straits of Johor to downtown Johor Bahru.

With luck, one day we’ll be able to get a glimpse beyond those borders as Street View continues to roll out coverage in countries across the globe. (Then we can finally find out just what it is they’re trying to hide from us…)

Locations: Austria, Belgium, Botswana, Crown Dependencies, France, Italy, Malaysia, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain / Categories: Natural Landmarks, Street Views, Structures

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The Float is not yet visible on Google Maps, but with the launch of Street View in Singapore we get a reasonable view of the 120m x 83m stage, configured for a soccer game, and its stands which hold up to 30,000 spectators. The stage has also hosted parades, fireworks and concerts, and will host ceremonies for the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics.

This temporary facility was built after a former national stadium had to be demolished. It will be removed when a new stadium is completed in 2011. The modular construction includes movable joints and pylons fixed to the seabed to protect the stage from movement caused by waves and tides.

In Austria, the imaginatively-named Lake Stage floats on Lake Constance in the city of Bregenz. It was the world’s largest floating stage until The Float was created.

With 7,000 seats, this outdoor theatre hosts operatic performances in an annual summer festival. The industrial-themed set in the images above is from the performances of Il Trovatore in 2005. Other extravagant stage designs have included Aida, A Masked Ball and Tosca, a performance of which was featured in the 2008 James Bond film Quantum of Solace, followed by an epic shootout.

The Austrians are apparently fond of floating stages; all the way across to the other side of the country there is a much smaller stage on the river Danube, in the town of Tulln.

This stage is mainly used for concerts; a good image of it can be found part way down this cyclist’s blog.

Let us know if there are floating stages in your part of the world.

Locations: Austria, Singapore / Categories: Movie Locations, Stadiums and Sport, Structures

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The Swiss city of Basel is home to one of the most spectacular tripoint monuments at the location where it borders Germany and France.

Basel’s dreiländereck (literally “3 lands place”) is home to a soaring metal three-sided spiral which bears the flags of the 3 countries. It is located on a quay in the river Rhine, near a restaurant of the same name. The actual tripoint is located just to the north-west, in the middle of the river.

Germany also has a significant tripoint where it meets Belgium and the Netherlands. Vaalserberg features a number of tourist attractions including a viewing tower, cafes and a maze.

While Google Maps seems to show the tripoint in a tree, I believe the actual location is marked by the 3 small monuments visible by their shadows in the upper-left of this image.¹

Not all tripoints are marked as cohesively. The one where Austria, Hungary and Slovakia meet has a number of monuments scattered across the different borders – all quite small, so check Panoramio to see them in detail.

Where is your favourite location with one foot in one country, one foot in a second, and … perhaps your nose in a third?

For more like this, see our 2008 post about Complicated Borders. Thanks to AndrewAnorak and David Grenewetzki.

Locations: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Slovakia, Switzerland / Categories: Mazes, Monuments, Towers

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The building consists of almost 1,400 apartments, meant to house up to 5,000 people. The design included amenities such as a swimming pool, library, laundries, shops, a school and medical facilities. Only the eastern side of the building stretches the full 1,100 metres, but in many sections there are blocks on the western side of the development which create internal courtyards and parks for the residents.

It was constructed by city planner Karl Ehn as part of the Socialist Party’s Red Vienna movement which saw huge quantities of public housing constructed when private housing development was unfeasible due to rent freezes. A special tax was imposed to allow these massive constructions to proceed, while the use of renowned architects ensured the buildings were varied and visually attractive, something very apparent on Bing Maps’ bird’s eye view.

The apartments were some of the first in the city to each include a toilet, running water and balconies – luxuries that workers of the time had never experienced before. Today, however, they are less desirable due to their small size and the fact that many don’t have showers or other modern facilities.

Several tunnels had to be incorporated into the design to allow the continuation of city streets and traffic flow.

The building suffered heavy damage during the Austrian Civil War of 1934 when military and police forces took severe action, bombarding the building to force out unarmed families and Party workers who were barricaded inside.  This damage wasn’t repaired until some years after World War 2.

Many pictures of Karl Marx Hof can be found at the Great Buildings website.

Locations: Austria / Categories: Buildings

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So it’s no surprise that on visiting my local park, Bekonscot Model Village in Buckinghamshire, I was more excited than a 5-year-old let loose in a sweetshop. As I stomped around the 1930s English villages I wondered if I could see the park on Google Earth?

Sadly, the resolution of Bekonscot in Google Earth just isn’t high enough to make out any of the lilliputian houses, trains or airplanes. However, I discovered the village is a founding member of the International Association of Miniature Parks, and many of the other member parks have great resolution.

So, today we are going to explore International Miniature Parks, where we’ll see the best sights on the globe, just smaller and more fuzzy!

Mini Europe

Mini Europe is located in Belgium but features sights from the whole of the European Union including Big Ben, Mount Vesuvius, the Berlin Wall (complete with falling action) and the Eiffel tower (pictured in the thumbnail).

Miniatürk

Miniatürk is a miniature Turkey in the city of Istanbul. In the thumbnail is the miniature version of Atatürk Olympic Stadium.

Minimundus

Minimundus in Austria claims to offer the “most beautiful buildings of all 5 continents”. St Peter’s Square is easy to spot and the Opera house is also in there somewhere.

Still in Minimundus, The CN Tower‘s height is being challenged by its neighbour the Eiffel tower, despite being almost twice the size in real life!

Rügen Park

At just 926 km² Rügen (Germany’s largest island) is only 2/3 the size of London, but if that’s just too much area for you to cover you can instead explore the tiny Rügen island at Rügen Park, located on the island of Rügen.

As an added bonus, to the west of the park you will find everywhere else, including the great pyramids, the Whitehouse and, pictured in the centre of the thumbnail, a pre-sinking Titanic.

Sardegna in Miniatura

Another miniature island within itself is Sardegna in Miniatura, which reproduces the Italian island of Sardinia.

Swiss Miniatur

Swiss Miniatur aims to “summarise Switzerland” in miniature form. Clearest in the Google Earth image is the Swiss Alps, located in the north-east of the park.

Italia in Miniatura

Back to Italy, Italia in Miniatura is located on a man-made island in the shape of Italy (of course), and features the country’s most famous landmarks. Look to the north of the mini-country and again you can just about make out the white peaks of the Alps.

Despite being a mini-Italy, they also have special section for a mini Eiffel tower. The resolution is too poor to make it out, but you’ve probably seen it enough already!

The rest…

For completeness, the other members of the International Association of Miniature Parks not featured today are the low-resolution Mini Israel, Miniatuur Walcheren, Pueblo Chico, Klein Erzgebirge, Miniature World, Catalunya in Miniatura, Pirenarium, and the previously featured excellent resolution Madurodam.

Further information on all the parks is available on the group website and Wikipedia has a large list of miniature parks which features many more.

Locations: Austria, Belgium, England, Germany, Italy, Turkey / Categories: Buildings, Crowds, Theme Parks

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Update: Welcome Boingboingers! We’ve had lots more funny placenames in the comments here, and yet more at Boing Boing, and now somebody’s located this excellent list of interesting or unusual place names on Wikipedia (and yes, there’s rude ones in there too!)

DON’T MISS

• Top 10 Rudest Place Names in America
• Top 10 Rudest Place Names in Britain
• Top 10 Rudest Place Names in Canada
• Top 10 Confusing Place Names

Locations: Austria / Categories: Rudeness, Structures, Weirdness

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If you’ve been a reader for a while you’ll remember the original Alien Civilization post, where people were arguing about the reasons for the strange images for months on end. In fact they only stopped when Google updated the images, and a very ordinary lake replaced the crazily-coloured pattern that had been there before.

This new Alien Civilization is actually a lake in the Austrian Alps, and quite probably frozen. In fact you can actually see skiers and snowboarders on top of the nearby Penken mountain – which is the first time I’ve seen a wintertime ski-resort in high-resolution (and has the added bonus that I was actually there in 2005!).

Thanks to MAX.

Locations: Austria / Categories: Stadiums and Sport, Watercraft, Weirdness

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