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 11,674 steps run alongside the Niesenbahn funicular which travels from the side of the Kander river in Mülenen (altitude 693m) to the terminus near the 2362m summit of Mount Niesen.

During the 28 minute ride, the funicular – which opened in 1910 – travels through lush Alpine woods, passes through several tunnels and across some elevated sections.

While the staircase is only used by service personnel, it is opened to 200 people for one day a year for the Niesenlauf stair run. The Galerien pages of the race’s German site give you some idea of what an ordeal this must be – running through cloud, rain or even snow, though the race takes place in June.

The record for the event is 1h2m for men and 1h9m for women, which I find remarkably fast considering the number of steps is equivalent to climbing the CN Tower 4.5 times, or Taipei 101 almost 6 times or the Empire State Building more than 7 times, though it does look like some sections are somewhat less steep than others.

There appears to be a more conventional hiking trail for public use, with the number of switchbacks along the way giving some sense of how steep this pyramid-shaped mountain really is.

The mountain’s visitor guide has some great pictures and information, and YouTube has a fast-forward trip up the funicular and a high-speed stroll to the summit.

Locations: Switzerland / Categories: Natural Landmarks, Other Vehicles, Structures

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What’s really interesting is that in summer the Lac des Dix can be up to 284 metres deep¹ – thanks to the fact that at 285 metres tall, the Grande Dixence is the world’s tallest dam.

Update: It turns out that this is actually the world’s 2nd tallest dam. See my comment for more info. Thanks to Gary for the correction.

Thanks to Joel.

Locations: Switzerland / Categories: Structures, Watercraft

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• The entire country of Switzerland at 50cm and many Swiss cities at 25cm. This of course means the Swiss Alps are now high-res, including the Matterhorn – which is incredible seen in Google Earth.

• The entire country of Denmark at 50cm
• The French cities of Lyon; LeMans; Lourdes; Riems; Nancy; Limoges; Lille and Arles
• Potsdam and Magdeburg, Germany
• Barcelona, Belem, CapeTown, Galapagos (Isabella Island), Manaus, Mt Saint Helens, Recife, Rio, Venice)
• Whistler, British Columbia
• The whole states of Wyoming and Utah

It seems here’s also been loads of other Digitalglobe updates too, so what on earth are you waiting for? Get exploring already, and send us what you find!

Thanks to Google Maps Mania and the Google Earth Blog!

Locations: Switzerland / Categories: Natural Landmarks, Site News

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Out faithful reader ChrisW (who suggested this sight) very kindly offered to head down and investigate what goes on at the giant flag building. So he went cycling 25km out of his way to snap this shot of the disappointingly dull “Friderici Transports” – a logistics company.

Many Thanks: ChrisW & HeatherW

Locations: Switzerland / Categories: Large Type

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The Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois is another US based lab with a linear accelerator but this one uses a Synchrotron. A synchrotron is a circular accelerator that uses a magnetic field to turn the particles and an electric field to accelerate them. By careful tuning of these two fields particles can be accelerated to 99.999999% of the speed of light. Once particles get up to these speeds the experments can begin. The super accelerated particles are shoved through things, bent with mirrors and have other particles injected into the steam to see what happens.

These two circles that look like a sideways eight are the Tevatron at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois and make up the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator. Four miles in circumference, the Tevatron is housed in a tunnel about 30 feet below the big ring you see in the aerial view. The particles complete the four-mile course nearly 50 thousand times a second. Damn, that is fast.

The other big player in particle accelerators in CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the world’s largest physics laboratory. CERN is located on the border between France and Switzerland and is otherwise known as the birth place of that thing called the World Wide Web. CERN have numerous particle accelerators but the biggest is the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC is currently under construction in tunnels that used to house the Large Electron-Positron Collider which ran from 1989 to 2000. This tunnel is 27km in length and 100 metres underground! It’s like something out of Half-Life! Unfortunately there isn’t very much to see from the air, the LHC is located somewhere in the area between Geneava airport and the Jura mountains to the North. I’ve been staring at the imagery for a while and I can’t make out any trace of it on the surface. Can you?

I’m sure there are many more accelerators out there to see but my head was starting to hurt from reading about particle physics. Feel free to post your particle physics related finds as comments on this post!

Thanks: Scott Lawson, dan, Matt, Jason, Rahul Karnik, David, joe, Foo Bar, Matt, Tom, Ilia Baldine, Douglas Boberg, Fred, Dave D, Brian Potter, Steve Abrahamson, Thomas Wade, Laurence Dorazio, Daryl Achilles, Tony Scislaw, Marc Armstrong, Tyler Stevenson, Joe, Luistxo Fernandez, Janx Spirit, David Drexler, David Drexler, Matt W., Matthew, Rodrigo, Joe, Jochen, Matthew Sz., Williamckley, Drew DeMott, Michael Lehet, Hubert Grzywacz, Bjørnven, Thomas, J Foote, Brad Lauster, Dalvenjah FoxFire, Robert Bogdon, cjw, Parker, Jim Duncan, Steve Bryson, Jeffrey Deane, Ryan Means, Benjamin, Jason Harris, David Drexler, Bobllingson, Lennie Stovel, punk floyd, Jason, SFuller and Sounil Yu.

Locations: California, France, Illinois, Switzerland / Categories: Buildings

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Yet another ‘world’s largest’! Will they ever end?

Thanks: Allan, Maite Elguero

Locations: Switzerland / Categories: Monuments, Watercraft

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