Street View has caught the aftermath of some merry mirthmakers’ acts of defamation: the classic prank known to the sages as ‘TPing’. In the US Mountain West, we’ve found at least two instances of houses engulfed in bathroom towelling (although the folks who did the deed in the second picture could really take a cue from the job done in the first picture, which was far more thorough).

Of course, if you really wanted to get someone good, perhaps you should just use something like this: a giant toilet paper roll the size of a small building. In actuality, it is a small building, namely the public toilet facilities at the Design Museum Gent in Ghent. Clever ones, those Belgians.

You never know when you’ll stumble upon a random toilet lying in the road. Plenty of North American households have mailboxes at the foot of their driveways, but how many have a toilet¹? Over in Paris, this toilet sits by itself at the foot of a tree. Let’s hope it’s being installed at the public toilet next door, because if it isn’t, then the city government has a rather poor sanitation strategy.

Then again, even when provided with the proper facilities, some people would rather just chance it, evidently. Dude, LOOK BEHIND YOU.

While not as outright weird as doing your business in a giant toilet paper roll, this public toilet building in Washington is rather unique, for it is built in the shape of a volcano. Perhaps due to the ‘eruptions’ going on inside.

If you’re not a fan of uniquely-shaped facilities, how about ones that are just plain big? We’re fairly certain that it was not the intention of the International Train & Trolley Museum outside of Orlando, Florida to be housed in a building that looks like it could be the world’s largest toilet, but that is indeed exactly how it appears.

A parting word of advice for when you do manage to find a public toilet nearby: for heaven’s sake, close the bloody door.

Locations: Belgium, Florida, France, Idaho, Ontario, Utah, Washington / Categories: Buildings, Rudeness, Street Views, Structures, Weirdness

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While it may look as though 8 large trailers have plummeted nose-first from the sky, they were in fact carefully placed by Frank Bates, who happens to own a nearby RV dealership. Google’s 45-degree imagery gives us a great look at the installation from the air.

This blog post has good images and information about the trailers, and the official website has a bunch of links and a documentary video. The neighbours are less than impressed with this apparent advertising ploy, but Bates is insistent that it is a true piece of art¹ inspired by his visit to Cadillac Ranch in Texas

We visited Cadillac Ranch back in the early days of this site. The satellite imagery hasn’t improved, and while there is now a Street View, it’s sadly from the very early low-resolution systems.

We visited Carhenge – another well-known car sculpture – in our Monumental Wannabes post last year. If you have a few hundred thousand dollars to spare apparently it’s now for sale.

We switch modes of transport briefly for a visit to a monument in Santa Rosa, California, that at first glance appears to be a fuzzy obelisk.

Closer observation reveals that it’s actually constructed of bicycle frames – three hundred and forty of them (and one tricycle) according this Wired article. Created by Mark Grieve and Ilana Spector the sculpture is named Cyclisk and stands almost 20m tall.

Google’s newly-released Street View imagery of Belgium allows us to see another bicycle sculpture in the town of Brakel, which is on the route of the Tour of Flanders spring classic race.

Returning to car art, we move to Sydney, Australia, where a large rock appears to have played a key role in a terrible accident involving a red Ford Festiva.

This is actually a sculpture named Still Life With Stone and Car, by artist Jimmie Durham, and it was created through the relatively simple process of, um… dropping a large rock on a car.

Originally placed near the Opera House, the sculpture was later moved to its current location where a pair of signs help dissuade any unknowing passers-by from calling the police to report the accident.

Sadly, this kind of cruel vehicular torture isn’t isolated – in 2009 we visited two places where cars have been impaled in the name of art.

In Toronto this car appears to have been abandoned for so long that it has been reclaimed by nature.

Commonly known as The Garden Car, it is more officially called the Community Vehicular Reclamation Project. More details can be found in this blog post.

Perhaps the most bizarre vehicular artwork can be found in rural Vermont, in the form of a large concrete gorilla holding aloft a Volkswagen Beetle.

The story behind its creation can be found at Roadside America.

To wrap up, a few artworks about which I haven’t been able to find much information. First, another Airstream trailer which has been converted into a spaceship in a park in Sacramento, California.

In Albuquerque an old Chevrolet has been tiled for some reason, and mounted on top of an arch.

And finally, in Geldrop, the Netherlands, a tiny old Fiat 500 has been bronzed and topped with a statue of a girl – the work of artist Carla Rump.

If you know of any other vehicular art, please post it in the comments. I’d particularly be interested to know if anyone from Stockholm knows if this bus-made-of-cars is visible on satellite or Street View. I really wanted to include it in this post but couldn’t find a precise location for it.

Locations: Australia, Belgium, California, Florida, Netherlands, New Mexico, Ontario, Texas, Vermont / Categories: Other Vehicles, Street Views, Structures, Weirdness

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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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Carlsberg Brewery, Copenhagen

To start, we visit the quite ornate Carlsberg Brewery in Copenhagen, Denmark². The western gate tower is supported by four carved granite elephants, the symbol of the brewery. The Latin inscription above the gate means Let us work for our country.

Businessman J.C. Jacobson founded this brewery, which has become a major part of what is now a global brewing conglomerate. He named it after his son Carl, who – after a feud – started his own New Carlsberg company. Following the elder’s death the breweries merged under Carl’s leadership.

The elephants are each marked with an initial of one of Carl’s four children, as well as a swastika. This was originally seen as a symbol of luck based on its origin in eastern religions, though the brewery abandoned its use when it was adopted by the German Nazi party.

One thing I remember from my visit is that workers were allowed to help themselves to a beer any time during the day. They went on strike in 2010 when the company tried to regulate that consumption!

The eastern gate is also notable for the plaque describing Carl Jacobsen’s vision for the brewery, and the depictions of his family and important figures from the business. Learn more about this historic brewery at its official site.

St. James’s Gate Brewery, Ireland

Over to Ireland now, and one of the world’s best known brands – Guinness, and its original brewery St James’s Gate. The gate is marked ’1759′ – the year Arthur Guinness first made beer here, and when he signed a 9,000 year lease!

Once the world’s largest brewery, the plant occupies a huge area south of the river Liffey. Along Crane Street we can find both an attractive brewery gate and a slogan painted by conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner.

At the heart of the factory is The Guinness Storehouse visitor centre³. While it’s difficult to get a clear view of it from Street View, it does have a new glass atrium designed to resemble a pint of their famous beer.

Weihenstephan Abbey, Germany

While Street View is available in some German cities, it has not yet made it to Freising in Bavaria, where the Weihenstephan Abbey claims to be the world’s oldest operating brewery.

While there are records of hops being used at the monastery as early as the 8th century, it was granted an official license in 1040, meaning it will celebrate its thousandth anniversary just 3 decades from now!

Abbaye Notre-Dame de Leffe, Belgium

A different group of monks created one of my personal favourite beers, Leffe. It’s no longer made at the Abbaye Notre-Dame de Leffe⁴ in Dinant, Belgium, though a revitalised religious community there does offer tours of the building, and there’s also a nearby museum.

Bragdy Gwynant, Wales

And finally, just to prove that size isn’t everything⁵, how about the world’s smallest brewery? The title is claimed by Bragdy Gwynant in Wales – basically a tiny shed where real ale is brewed for the Tynllidiart Arms pub next door!

We’d love to hear from our readers – post a comment with a link to the location of your personal favourite brewery or brewpub!

Locations: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Wales / Categories: Buildings, Street Views

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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 train has just left neighbouring Romania and is passing through Moldova on its way to Ukraine… but as you may have guessed by now, this train passes through Moldova at the exact point where the three countries meet. If the train had been just a little longer, it could have actually straddled all three countries at the same time!

Elsewhere in Europe, we find the Belgian town of Baarle-Hertog – which is in the Netherlands.

Baarle-Hertog is made up of twenty separate Belgian exclaves in the Netherlands, and three other pieces on the Dutch-Belgian border. Even more confusingly, there are also seven Dutch exclaves within the Belgian exclaves!

The Dutch parts of the town are called Baarle-Nassau, and the border is so complicated that there are some houses that are divided between the two countries. Allegedly there was once a Dutch law which required restaurants to close earlier than those in Belgium, which for some restaurants simply meant that the clients had to move tables to the Belgian side.

Read more about Moldova, Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau at Wikipedia. BLDG blog also has an excellent article about Baarle-Hertog.

Thanks to Eric Hagerman and Nev Stokes.

Locations: Belgium, Moldova, Netherlands, Romania, Ukraine / Categories: Buildings, Other Vehicles

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Between Saint-Louis and Arzviller in France, a system was required that enabled the canal to cross the Vosges Mountains. The solution is the Saint-Louis-Arzviller inclined plane, a single structure that replaced 17 locks upon its completion in 1969.

Basically, vessels float into a gigantic bathtub which is then hauled up a 108.7 metre-long ramp at 41°. This vertical change of 44.6 m used to take 8 to 13 hours to traverse, but can now be achieved in just 4 minutes.

Such canal inclined planes are actually not uncommon, but the Saint-Louis-Arzviller example is probably the steepest. In Belgium, engineers have a more traditionally modest angle, but over a much greater distance – the Ronquières inclined plane climbs 68 m vertically, but is nearly 1.5 kilometres long! This time there are two giant bathtubs (actually known as caissons), and the journey takes a much more leisurely 45 minutes to complete.

Seemingly on a roll, Belgian engineers are also responsible for the Strépy-Thieu boat lift – an absolutely monumental machine that dispenses entirely with inclines, and just lifts the barges straight up and down in two counterbalanced caissons¹. The difference between water levels is 73.2 metres, meaning this is officially the world’s tallest boat lift. At least until the new one at the Three Gorges dam is finished anyway…

We already posted the world’s steepest flight of locks, the Caen Hill Flight, so instead here’s the Foxton Locks – a set of ten canal locks consisting of two “staircases” each of five locks. Because the Foxton locks can hold many boats at once, they’ve become a very popular location for Gongoozling – the art of watching activity on UK canals. No, seriously – there’s a Wikipedia page on Gongoozlers and everything.

The best thing about the Foxton locks however, is that we can actually see a barge in one of the locks.

The UK also has two working boat lifts – the Anderton Boat Lift in Cheshire, England, and the awesome Falkirk Wheel in Scotland (which is unfortunately not available on Google Earth or Maps, but Microsoft’s Live Local has a good image of it²).

Although both rely on Archimedes’ Principle, the Falkirk wheel is unique as it is the only rotating boat lift in the world. Barges enter the wheel at the ends of two opposing 15 metre arms, which then rotate through 180° in five and a half minutes, using only the energy it takes to boil 8 kettles!

Read more at Wikipedia about the Saint-Louis-Arzviller inclined plane, the Ronquières inclined plane, the Strépy-Thieu boat lift, the Foxton Locks, the Anderton Boat Lift, and the Falkirk Wheel.

Or, if you’re really interested, “Canal lifts and inclines of the world” by Hans-Joachim Uhlemann seems to be definitive book on this subject.

Thanks to Jel and others.

Locations: Belgium, England, France, Germany, Scotland / Categories: Bridges, Structures, Watercraft

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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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The Belgian airforce had around 197 of the American built F-84Fs, and the story goes that this one, serial number FU-36, crash-landed here around 40 years ago. Then, when somebody decided to build a school here – rather than moving the aircraft out of the way – the buildings were built around the plane!

Check out these fantastic HDR photographs of the aircraft.

However, personally I think the story is a little far-fetched. Even if you accepted that the builders wouldn’t just move it out of the way, what’s the chances that Belgium would just abandon one of their fighters?

I searched high and low for mention of FU-36 on the web, and found several conflicting reports of its location and status. Some sites do indeed describe it as “abandonded“, but others describe it as “preserved at a Tech School”.

One site even claims that “this is one of several aircraft that languished on Belgian military airfields” which would imply to me that, at some point, this plane was decommissioned and stored away on an airfield. Perhaps before being donated to the school?

Anyway, enough of this “investigative journalism” – the crash-landing story is way more fun!

Thanks: asfaltkonijn via Timdc

Locations: Belgium / Categories: Aircraft

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Situated only 2Km from the main runway of nearby Antwerp International Airport, the farm must have low-flying passenger planes pass over every few minutes.

However, rather than complaining about the noise, they claim to love aircraft noise! They even painted it on the roof, just in case you didn’t believe them.

Unless there’s a hint of sarcasm in the message…

Thanks: Romanov & felle

Locations: Belgium / Categories: Aircraft, Large Type

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