It must be tourists going back north to the dutch country , and those guys have a reputation of being skinflint . Not sure if that behaviour will save them money .
@TKUA11 most of belgium does not live near luxembourg to just fuel up there. most people in belgium live in the northern side which is closer to the netherlands and fuel in the netherlands is more expensive than belgium. so belgium still makes more money keeping it high
a lot of dutch people go to fuel in Belgium because right now benzine is about 60 cents cheaper per liter there. so it is funny to me that Belgians do the exact same thing but in Luxembourg
Yeah, we tax our petrol so high that it now makes sense (I'm not doing it though) to go from the center of the Netherlands to Belgium and back and be cheaper overall.
@digger_in_the_dark What kind of beer? Because as far as i know all our good beers are cheaper in Belgium. In fact even cheaper belgian beers are cheaper than in NL, idk about France
@mintoc8853 afaik they're priced roughly the same you just pay less tax on it across the border, only worth it if you buy in bulk. That's what my Belgian partner told me anyway 😅
As an engineer, I was involved around the year 2000 in planning a fire-fighting water pipeline intended to supply all the Luxembourg petrol stations along the border. Rather naively, we assumed that the border coincided with the edge of the present road and therefore designed the pipeline to run parallel to it, a few meters inside Luxembourg territory. However, as the mayor of the Belgian town of Martelange later pointed out to us, the actual border does not always follow the road edge. In some sections it runs further away, along the roadside strip and sometimes even along the boundaries of the petrol station parcels themselves. As a result, the Luxembourg water pipeline actually crosses Belgian territory at certain points.
Almost every dutch person that drives to France has been to Martelange. Belgian fuel is already a lot cheaper than Dutch fuel, so you can imagine the price difference with fuel from Luxembourg..
Maybe I should have stated this in the video: the sideways Belgian flag is not a mistake, it was the flag of the Belgian Revolution! The modern Belgian flag we now know was adopted a couple years later (hence me switching to it later in the video). ... the Italy-Slovenia thing is just a fuck up though.
You're not completely wrong with the ethanol-methanol. In the petrol stations you can buy anti-freeze and windshield cleaning fluids, which contain methanol.
Actually about the flag, this is still the correct one as the Belgian constitution describes the flag like this, "red, yellow black". The modern flag is an unconstitutional version
We belgians love to play with our borders. Have you already looked into the Vennbahn (Our territory in Germany) or Baarle Hertog/Baarle Nassau (same in the Netherlands) .
Ah, now Gabe, there was a nasty accident in Martelange in 1967, which is indirectly to do with the petrol stations, as a petrol tanker crashed at the bridge at the bottom of the hill and set fire to a good third of Martelange. A very nasty accident indeed (and only came a bit after the Dewsbury Ethylene near miss, when a driver had a heart attack coming into Dewsbury and hit the Town Hall, but that's a different story.).
@wilsan806 I'm not sure if it's actually true but I've been told a number of times that hospital emergency rooms have a small stock of liquor (jenever I've been told, but I guess gin or whatever in places where jenever isn't as popular) to serve as antidote when people with a methanol poisoning come in.
I have passed through this village on a bus (had to take a flixbus from luxembourg to liège because all the trains were cancelled. ah, belgium) and once I saw this row of petrol stations I immediately knew what was going on lmao
@MatteoBucci95 Singapore's immigration/customs authorities have also been kept busy exposing tobacco products being smuggled from neighbouring Malaysia (as their taxes are lower & Singapore doesn't have any duty-free allowance for tobacco). More recently they've also been uncovering vapes (which're outright banned in Singapore while 10/13 of Malaysia's territories/states allow them with regulation I heard)
A. All of this is also the reason the Berchem petrol stations on the A3 in Luxembourg are Europe's largest, and biggest petrol sellers. B. Border drawing issues can be found all over Europe. Or all over the world, for that matter, like the mostly random borders the British drew in the Middle East. ;)
Point A is probably the same for the Shell beside the Malaysia side of the Tuas 2nd Link border crossing to Singapore, where the only unoccupied pumps I saw were those without octane-97/8 petrol (the cheapest petrol that Singapore-registered vehicles are legally allowed to buy there). Some might make a pit stop for the toilets there too in case the border crossing queue is long
12:11 I think there are some racing cars that drive with methanol as their fuel? That apparently has the weird side effect that flames resulting from crashes are nearly invisible, ... probably because no unoxidised carbon is ever released, only carbon monoxide? I'm just guessing here.
It's because alcohol fires burn at a stupid temp and burn very cleanly - meaning most of the energy turns into heat, and so the light (in essence, another byproduct of burning) is fainter. Faint enough that normal sunlight or even stronger spotlights would drown out the glow.
@TKBarnes So it doesn't have anything to do with how there's already enough oxygen in the methane to convert all the carbon to at least carbon monoxide?
@noobtracker it might, I've no idea about the chemistry of ethanol fire, but I would guess it's more to do with purity of the fuel, you only get co2 and h20 from alcohol fires, both not really burn further (outside, like, fusion and sh--) and both are clear so they won't produce colourful flames. BUT I'm not a chemist and this is all based off high-school chemistry I remember and some odd popular science shows :)😂
IndyCar used to (maybe they still do, but they definitely used to) use methanol. It's why after the fuel hose is removed during a pitstop the spot where the nozzle was attached is sprayed with water - need to be sure there's no invisible flames.
@JeroenJA every food in Luxembourg is super reduced TVA bracket 3%. Even restaurants. Whereas Belgium I think doesnt even have a super reduced rate (Euro allowed basically only Lux and France to keep their super reduced rate because they were the only to already have a rate below 3%) so Belgian food is 6% TVA and maybe even 12% for soft drinks since their health ministry may deem it non essential. This could be relevant if Lux ministry also deems soft drinks non essential and thus put them in the reduced bracket of 6% which would be either equal to Belgium's reduced bracket or half of Belgium's medium bracket.
Basically Belgium has (estimated numbers) a reduced 6% TVA bracket, a medium 12% bracket and a high 18% bracket. While Luxembourg has a super reduced 3% bracket, a reduced 6%, medium 11% and high 17%. And Luxembourg is pretty famous for having a BUNCH of things within that 3% super reduced bracket..
@JeroenJAit's not just the VAT, its the "sugartax" we have in Belgium that makes it far more expensive. Another One of those moneymaking scemes where they tax you "to make you healthier "😂
Similar things happen on the Belgium French border, Belgium sells fuels, garden centre stuff and furniture for a lower price and France sells cheese and wine for lower prices.
Meanwhile for Singapore & Malaysia, people from the former pour into the latter to buy cheaper goods & services while people from the latter also pour into the former for work (almost 400k people!) as salaries are higher (a side effect is that some of them thus reportedly value higher education less & dropped out of school before secondary/middle/junior high school national graduation exams in 10th grade (called SPM locally, their successor to the 'O' levels) as they find blue-collar salaries in Singapore to be even higher than white-collar salaries in Malaysia!)
It's such a small world we're living in. I drive through Martelange every Monday to get to work and I'm happy their prices haven't been raised to the moon yet.
The Martelange truck explosion was an accident in which a tanker truck, the driver of which had lost control and which was loaded with 47,000 liters of liquid gas, crashed into the bridge on 21st August1967 and exploded. This violent explosion and the fire caused by the fireball damaged or destroyed 13 houses within a radius of hundreds of metres; 22 people were killed and 54 were injured, some seriously, many of them with severe burns. Parts of the truck were dragged for several hundred meters. Shortly before the accident, around 300 people had gathered at the cemetery. Most of them had just left when the accident happened. If this had happened a quarter of an hour earlier, the outcome could have been much more dramatic.
Wasn't it also a festival day? I think in one of the you tube posts about it, it mentions, in French, that it was a carnival of some kind, and it was lucky that it was, because it kept a lot of the children of Martelange away from the fire.
Belgium is actually not that angry about having lower excises in Luxembourg due to the UEBL - a customs union from 1921 still in force between Belgium and Luxembourg. A big part of the excises collected in Luxembourg are split and transferred to Belgium.
12:16 The surrounding countryside is indeed very nice. I went on holiday in a nearby village every year since I was 6 month old to my 30's. Castles, museums, hikes in the forest, swimming in lakes, milking cows and learn to drive a tractor... ☺
I accidentally ended up there as part of a road trip from the UK to Saarbrücken and everyone in the car went “WTAF” at all the petrol stations. We did wonder why that existed
Same thing happened to me. 1989 road trip back from east Germany before the wall came down. I was driving and suddenly realised there was nothing but petrol stations
Interesting: I was expecting an outcome like the Vennbahn, with the road in Belgium and the town either side of it in Luxembourg. But evidently that needed another 80-odd years of geopolitical contortions.
For the German part of the border region to Luxembourg, coffee is also one of those products massively cheaper (because Germany has a special 'coffee tax'). So e.g. in the town of Wasserbillig you have a similar street lined with petrol stations each having a huge store attached that besides booze and tobacco mainly offers all sorts of coffee in insane quantities.
There is a second one. Im Wasserbillig, where you have a stretch or 1km of only petrol stations and shops selling massive amounts of tobacco, coffee, alcohol, ...
Brings back memories. We used to pass through Martelange when we went on vacation (coming from the Netherlands) and used to fill up there before moving on to France. That was in the 80's :)
What excellent timing. I’m off next week to spend a few days wandering round Luxembourg and southeast Belgium. Now I know when to stock up on drink. Fascinating as always, thanks!
You don't wanna know how many dutchies are coming to belgium to fill up their gas tank because the prices in The Netherlands are sooo much higher than in belgium so it kinda evens out
There is a really lovely museum of slate in the luxembourgish side of Martelange. An old mine of slate that you can visit. Very nice and interesting piece of industrial archeology
So how can you give a review of Martelange without mentioning the disaster that took place there in August 1967, when a tank truck and trailer hit the side of the bridge after a brake failure and missing the curve descending to the village and exploding, instantly killing 22 people and destroying half the village including the Aral service station which is still there today.
Drove through that place back in 1988 on a university field trip. The petrol stations were built on platforms as I believe the valley falls away from the road quite steeply.
When we use to go skiing in the Alps, before there was a high way, we would stop on the way back home at those Luxemburgish petrol stations because it was so much cheaper .
Fun fact: - at the border between Italy and Switzerland, at Lavena Ponte Tresa, there way too many sushi restaurant than there should be. Something like 13 Japanese / Chinese restaurants for 5000 people.
Thanks for your clear and interesting explanation of the origins of Luxembourg. I think that the Luxembourg side of the street celebrates "stroads" from mid-America.
I love Martelange. Basically always stopped here for fuel on the way to Spain from The Netherlands, I immediately recognized the town in the thumbnail!
One of my favorite examples of different laws creating weird markets like this is that until recently my state of Georgia had fairly strict firework laws, but states like Alabama and South Carolina don’t. The result? You cross the border and immediately off any major highway there is most likely going to be a massive firework store.
About a fortnite ago I did a road trip from the UK to Austria for skiing and we literally added an hour of detour (and the "Joy" of Belgian roads...) to our already 22 hour journey so we could save £30 on fuel and about £50 of péage per car for the journey
Fun fact about Martelange : there was a huge chain reaction of explosions at the petrostations in the 60s or 70s there. To my knowledge, it is also the only one that occured in Europe, maybe even the world.
I live in the commune of Rambrouch, which includes Martelange, and I’m really happy to see a bit of history about western Luxembourg here. Speaking of history and the various powers that influenced Luxembourg, there’s a wonderful small exhibition at the Musée Dräi Eechelen in Luxembourg City about the controversial Luxembourg Federal Contingent. I really recommend checking it out. Unfortunately, it’s only running until March 22.
I will just have to say this. You have become the next tom Scot in all but flesh, it’s so refreshing to have someone traveling around to gawk and research interesting things around the world. Big thanks maaan 🎉
Nice video. If you fancy another trip to Luxemburg you could do one on its eastern border: the river there belongs to both Luxemburg ánd Germany. Sort of overlapping borders.
Oh Sh* ! Near my old place! That was a great video! It reminded me a lot of fun memories around there! Now I live in Japan, your videos are great, and I can relate to them a lot! Thank you very much! I wish you great thing for the next ones!
And this is why you base your operations in Luxembourg when starting Euro Truck Simulator
So before every trip you can stock up on cheap booze
You don't, because you as player can still go there.
You get the garage and fill it up with npc drivers.
Kaliningrad is even better
Is this even true? I am not sure tbh I always assumed it was a flat rate over the map...
@Jijhebtmijnnaamnietnodig it's not a flat rate, Luxembourg was cheapest in base game last I checked
@shorunqualtec2070 Kaliningrad is not in base game
If you ever branch out to interviewing people, please call it "Who the hell are you?"
Should be "Who On Earth Is This?", no ?
physics:
How the fuck is this?
“Who the hell do you think you are?”
"Who the hell am I?"😊
@recrudesce no.
Fun fact: Every year, a surprising number of Dutch tourists don't quite make it to the Luxembourg border before their tank hits zero.
I would be suprised knowing that Octane 95 vost litterly €2.205/liter euros compared to €1.455-€1.699/liter in belgium
It must be tourists going back north to the dutch country , and those guys have a reputation of being skinflint . Not sure if that behaviour will save them money .
Belgium should just lower their taxes, since people are going she’s by their fuel there anyways
@TKUA11 most of belgium does not live near luxembourg to just fuel up there. most people in belgium live in the northern side which is closer to the netherlands and fuel in the netherlands is more expensive than belgium. so belgium still makes more money keeping it high
@khasugha9604 Also that's a race to the bottom. Instead, they should get Luxembourg to increase their taxes, with the EU and all.
As a belgian living in the provinces of Luxemburg, this place is an obligatory stop for us when we go in vacation in france lol
My friend lives near here and crosses the border to buy practically everything haha
Half of the Netherlands does the same when going and/or coming back from France.
As a Belgian living in another province of Belgium, this is also an obligatory stop going in France and south Europe
@The_Son_of_Clippy🤝
Martelange is the Mecca for any belgians living in the province of Luxembourg. You have to go there at least once in your life.
a lot of dutch people go to fuel in Belgium because right now benzine is about 60 cents cheaper per liter there. so it is funny to me that Belgians do the exact same thing but in Luxembourg
And crazily, Belgian beer is cheaper in NL and France 😅
Yeah, we tax our petrol so high that it now makes sense (I'm not doing it though) to go from the center of the Netherlands to Belgium and back and be cheaper overall.
Norwegians go to Sweden, Swedes to Denmark, Danes to Germany, and Germans to Luxemburg.
@digger_in_the_dark What kind of beer? Because as far as i know all our good beers are cheaper in Belgium. In fact even cheaper belgian beers are cheaper than in NL, idk about France
@mintoc8853 afaik they're priced roughly the same you just pay less tax on it across the border, only worth it if you buy in bulk. That's what my Belgian partner told me anyway 😅
As an engineer, I was involved around the year 2000 in planning a fire-fighting water pipeline intended to supply all the Luxembourg petrol stations along the border. Rather naively, we assumed that the border coincided with the edge of the present road and therefore designed the pipeline to run parallel to it, a few meters inside Luxembourg territory.
However, as the mayor of the Belgian town of Martelange later pointed out to us, the actual border does not always follow the road edge. In some sections it runs further away, along the roadside strip and sometimes even along the boundaries of the petrol station parcels themselves. As a result, the Luxembourg water pipeline actually crosses Belgian territory at certain points.
Not enough people have seen this incredible comment
Almost every dutch person that drives to France has been to Martelange. Belgian fuel is already a lot cheaper than Dutch fuel, so you can imagine the price difference with fuel from Luxembourg..
At the moment there is no much difference between prices in Belgium and Luxembourg
Unleaded 95 (E10) hovering around €1.57-€1.65 per liter, while in Ravels (BE) near the Dutch border I paid € 1.628 yesterday
@sonnylatchstring Most of the Netherlands is at €2.059-€2.459 depending on highway pricing or local pricing. I have seen €2.519 too last weekend.
@Tokikosworldlocal is up to €2.30 now
As a luxembourgish person Im thanking you for talking about our small but lovely country.
Merci fir den video!
same here
Ech och haha
God Luxembourgish really is just french and german mashed together
@plushiedev ..with a pinch of Dutch.
@plushiedev Sooo...Dutch?
Finally it paid off that you have that entirely bright green bedroom.
Maybe I should have stated this in the video: the sideways Belgian flag is not a mistake, it was the flag of the Belgian Revolution! The modern Belgian flag we now know was adopted a couple years later (hence me switching to it later in the video).
... the Italy-Slovenia thing is just a fuck up though.
You're not completely wrong with the ethanol-methanol. In the petrol stations you can buy anti-freeze and windshield cleaning fluids, which contain methanol.
Actually about the flag, this is still the correct one as the Belgian constitution describes the flag like this, "red, yellow black". The modern flag is an unconstitutional version
The second Belgian revolution* the first Belgian revolution had black and yellow swapped in 1790
We belgians love to play with our borders.
Have you already looked into the Vennbahn (Our territory in Germany) or Baarle Hertog/Baarle Nassau (same in the Netherlands) .
There are a "German Luxembourg" and a "French Luxembourg", too!
Lëtzebuerg ? Op RUclips ? 🙀
Tipp topp!
Ah, now Gabe, there was a nasty accident in Martelange in 1967, which is indirectly to do with the petrol stations, as a petrol tanker crashed at the bridge at the bottom of the hill and set fire to a good third of Martelange. A very nasty accident indeed (and only came a bit after the Dewsbury Ethylene near miss, when a driver had a heart attack coming into Dewsbury and hit the Town Hall, but that's a different story.).
1:08 You've got Italy and Slovenia inverted...
Also, isn't that literally the border town from Jetlag?
@Antanana_Rivo Yup, they were both in Gorica and Nova Gorica.
Engagement bait
Please don't drink methanol. You'll literally die.
Or if you are lucky, just go blind. It's win win really isn't it!?
Unless you drink ethanol at the same time!
@wilsan806 I'm not sure if it's actually true but I've been told a number of times that hospital emergency rooms have a small stock of liquor (jenever I've been told, but I guess gin or whatever in places where jenever isn't as popular) to serve as antidote when people with a methanol poisoning come in.
From which quantity onwards?
@wilsan806 Underrated life-saving comment right here.
You got the flags wrong in the Gorizia/Nova Gorica frame. Unless Italy has become Slovenia and vice versa.
Fuck me I'm not sure how I managed that. I've even been there! Just a brain fart I guess
I litterally wanted to write the same thing, but then I seen the comment is already there written by someone else 🤣
GORICA JE NAŠA, TRST PA ŠE BO
@tamius-han People just can't resist bringing century-old politics in where it wasn't wanted.
Yeah, that happens sometimes...its very traumatic for the residents
I have passed through this village on a bus (had to take a flixbus from luxembourg to liège because all the trains were cancelled. ah, belgium) and once I saw this row of petrol stations I immediately knew what was going on lmao
It's funny to see how many travellers also take the opportunity to refill on alcohol and cigarettes 😅
@MatteoBucci95 Singapore's immigration/customs authorities have also been kept busy exposing tobacco products being smuggled from neighbouring Malaysia (as their taxes are lower & Singapore doesn't have any duty-free allowance for tobacco). More recently they've also been uncovering vapes (which're outright banned in Singapore while 10/13 of Malaysia's territories/states allow them with regulation I heard)
- "Why this tiny village is full of petrol stations"
- Looks inside
- Full explanation of why Luxembourg exists
2:47 Fun fact: de jure is Latin, it's not pronounced like French.
A. All of this is also the reason the Berchem petrol stations on the A3 in Luxembourg are Europe's largest, and biggest petrol sellers.
B. Border drawing issues can be found all over Europe. Or all over the world, for that matter, like the mostly random borders the British drew in the Middle East. ;)
Point A is probably the same for the Shell beside the Malaysia side of the Tuas 2nd Link border crossing to Singapore, where the only unoccupied pumps I saw were those without octane-97/8 petrol (the cheapest petrol that Singapore-registered vehicles are legally allowed to buy there). Some might make a pit stop for the toilets there too in case the border crossing queue is long
12:11 I think there are some racing cars that drive with methanol as their fuel? That apparently has the weird side effect that flames resulting from crashes are nearly invisible, ... probably because no unoxidised carbon is ever released, only carbon monoxide? I'm just guessing here.
It's because alcohol fires burn at a stupid temp and burn very cleanly - meaning most of the energy turns into heat, and so the light (in essence, another byproduct of burning) is fainter. Faint enough that normal sunlight or even stronger spotlights would drown out the glow.
@TKBarnes So it doesn't have anything to do with how there's already enough oxygen in the methane to convert all the carbon to at least carbon monoxide?
@noobtracker it might, I've no idea about the chemistry of ethanol fire, but I would guess it's more to do with purity of the fuel, you only get co2 and h20 from alcohol fires, both not really burn further (outside, like, fusion and sh--) and both are clear so they won't produce colourful flames.
BUT I'm not a chemist and this is all based off high-school chemistry I remember and some odd popular science shows :)😂
Radio controlled aeroplanes (not the electric ones, the ones which make lots of noise) run on methanol.
IndyCar used to (maybe they still do, but they definitely used to) use methanol. It's why after the fuel hose is removed during a pitstop the spot where the nozzle was attached is sprayed with water - need to be sure there's no invisible flames.
I visit this little town once every 6 weeks to stock up on tobacco and soft drinks. It's almost half the price of in Belgium.
And I have a big top box on my motorcycle for the same reason. :D
huh, soft drinks?? why are those also cheaper? o.O
@JeroenJA every food in Luxembourg is super reduced TVA bracket 3%. Even restaurants. Whereas Belgium I think doesnt even have a super reduced rate (Euro allowed basically only Lux and France to keep their super reduced rate because they were the only to already have a rate below 3%) so Belgian food is 6% TVA and maybe even 12% for soft drinks since their health ministry may deem it non essential. This could be relevant if Lux ministry also deems soft drinks non essential and thus put them in the reduced bracket of 6% which would be either equal to Belgium's reduced bracket or half of Belgium's medium bracket.
Basically Belgium has (estimated numbers) a reduced 6% TVA bracket, a medium 12% bracket and a high 18% bracket. While Luxembourg has a super reduced 3% bracket, a reduced 6%, medium 11% and high 17%. And Luxembourg is pretty famous for having a BUNCH of things within that 3% super reduced bracket..
@JeroenJAit's not just the VAT, its the "sugartax" we have in Belgium that makes it far more expensive. Another One of those moneymaking scemes where they tax you "to make you healthier "😂
As a Belgian guy, I can say that you make a great explanation of that area of belgium. 🙂
The answer starts at 9:17. Before that it is a brief history of Benelux countries for some reason.
You're welcome.
Similar things happen on the Belgium French border, Belgium sells fuels, garden centre stuff and furniture for a lower price and France sells cheese and wine for lower prices.
Meanwhile for Singapore & Malaysia, people from the former pour into the latter to buy cheaper goods & services while people from the latter also pour into the former for work (almost 400k people!) as salaries are higher (a side effect is that some of them thus reportedly value higher education less & dropped out of school before secondary/middle/junior high school national graduation exams in 10th grade (called SPM locally, their successor to the 'O' levels) as they find blue-collar salaries in Singapore to be even higher than white-collar salaries in Malaysia!)
Somehow Charlemagne, Napoleon, King Billy, and the EU have created Breezewood, Pennsylvania from first principles
The Ardennes was also a major battleground in World War I.
It's such a small world we're living in. I drive through Martelange every Monday to get to work and I'm happy their prices haven't been raised to the moon yet.
The Martelange truck explosion was an accident in which a tanker truck, the driver of which had lost control and which was loaded with 47,000 liters of liquid gas, crashed into the bridge on 21st August1967 and exploded.
This violent explosion and the fire caused by the fireball damaged or destroyed 13 houses within a radius of hundreds of metres; 22 people were killed and 54 were injured, some seriously, many of them with severe burns.
Parts of the truck were dragged for several hundred meters.
Shortly before the accident, around 300 people had gathered at the cemetery. Most of them had just left when the accident happened. If this had happened a quarter of an hour earlier, the outcome could have been much more dramatic.
There was a video on that just recently.
Wasn't it also a festival day? I think in one of the you tube posts about it, it mentions, in French, that it was a carnival of some kind, and it was lucky that it was, because it kept a lot of the children of Martelange away from the fire.
I remember us filling up there in 1984 on a drive from the UK to Strasbourg. Crazy that it's still like that!
I live in Luxembourg on the German border, we only have 6 petrol stations
You live in the wrong town then XD if you go Mertert-Wasserbillig, you'll have at least 9 in one go
Echternach? :D That's where I used to buy petrol, coming over from Bitburg
Breezewood, PA claims they have the most gas stations. Martelange says hold my (much better tasting) beer...
Belgium is actually not that angry about having lower excises in Luxembourg due to the UEBL - a customs union from 1921 still in force between Belgium and Luxembourg. A big part of the excises collected in Luxembourg are split and transferred to Belgium.
12:16 The surrounding countryside is indeed very nice.
I went on holiday in a nearby village every year since I was 6 month old to my 30's.
Castles, museums, hikes in the forest, swimming in lakes, milking cows and learn to drive a tractor... ☺
Your commentary and your delivery on history and geopolitics is legendary
I wish my history teacher was half as enthousiastic about his job as you are
Love from Rotterdamn man!
Oh my god, yesterday I discovered this channel and now I am going videos one by one 😀❤This is golden!
Low taxes -> business grows -> people have job. Think about it.
You are my new favorite yt channel. Loved your amused grief at the beginning, about this story involving the HRE. Keep up the good work.
Just discovered your channel last week and enjoying it a lot! Keep it going 👍🏻👍🏻 Greetings from Belgium
I accidentally ended up there as part of a road trip from the UK to Saarbrücken and everyone in the car went “WTAF” at all the petrol stations. We did wonder why that existed
Same thing happened to me. 1989 road trip back from east Germany before the wall came down. I was driving and suddenly realised there was nothing but petrol stations
I absolutely love your channel bro. One of my favourite ones I look forward to recently.
Another funny, entertaining and informative video - god you're killing it mate! Keep up the great work ❤
Interesting: I was expecting an outcome like the Vennbahn, with the road in Belgium and the town either side of it in Luxembourg. But evidently that needed another 80-odd years of geopolitical contortions.
For the German part of the border region to Luxembourg, coffee is also one of those products massively cheaper (because Germany has a special 'coffee tax').
So e.g. in the town of Wasserbillig you have a similar street lined with petrol stations each having a huge store attached that besides booze and tobacco mainly offers all sorts of coffee in insane quantities.
Haha, Wasserbillig - cheap water, should then maybe be renamed to Kaffeebillig
@science75902That has basically been the running gag for the past 40 years or so.
Although not Kaffeebillig but Spritbillig. ;-)
This reminds me of Maastricht, where everyone drives into Belgium to buy gas and to many Belgium is the affordable suburb to Maastricht.
First time viewer, very enjoyable and informative video. Subbed 👍
There is a second one. Im Wasserbillig, where you have a stretch or 1km of only petrol stations and shops selling massive amounts of tobacco, coffee, alcohol, ...
What about Echternach.. 😂😂😂
That's a common occurence. There's a town in Andorra (Pas de la Casa) whose economy solely consists of cheap tobacco shops for French customers
It's even more fun if you realise "Wasserbillig" means "Watercheap" in German. It's just not the water that's cheap...
@68Haulerwhat about Rodange? 😂😂😂
@cannotbeleftblank6027 Meanwhile Malaysia has a town called _Ayer Hitam_ which literally means 'BlackWater'
Brings back memories. We used to pass through Martelange when we went on vacation (coming from the Netherlands) and used to fill up there before moving on to France. That was in the 80's :)
What excellent timing. I’m off next week to spend a few days wandering round Luxembourg and southeast Belgium. Now I know when to stock up on drink. Fascinating as always, thanks!
brilliant series, subscribed
Your dry humour is perfect for this edutainment content. Have you considered a colab with Weet Je Dat Ook Weer?
Credit to the petrol-booze-station camera operator!
very interesting and very entertaining. subscribing!
You don't wanna know how many dutchies are coming to belgium to fill up their gas tank because the prices in The Netherlands are sooo much higher than in belgium so it kinda evens out
And then Luxembourg for cigarettes.
Given their average height, they are the grand dutchies of Luxemburg!
There is a really lovely museum of slate in the luxembourgish side of Martelange. An old mine of slate that you can visit. Very nice and interesting piece of industrial archeology
I crossed this village while going to france last year an its really impressive to see all the petrol stations.
Thanks for the video, Greetings from rainy Maastricht!
Quite funny to actually see my village represented in a recommended video, i work in the Q8's you have mentionned and live in Martelange (belgium)
Thank you for another video
So how can you give a review of Martelange without mentioning the disaster that took place there in August 1967, when a tank truck and trailer hit the side of the bridge after a brake failure and missing the curve descending to the village and exploding, instantly killing 22 people and destroying half the village including the Aral service station which is still there today.
Luxemburg mentioned WHHOOO
Drove through that place back in 1988 on a university field trip. The petrol stations were built on platforms as I believe the valley falls away from the road quite steeply.
Martelange.
That strange little town where you park your car in another country when you come back from work.
I drive trough this village every time I go to Belgium.
Interesting, educational, and witty.
When we use to go skiing in the Alps, before there was a high way, we would stop on the way back home at those Luxemburgish petrol stations because it was so much cheaper .
I laughed out loud at "Rural Myth" 😀
Fun fact:
- at the border between Italy and Switzerland, at Lavena Ponte Tresa, there way too many sushi restaurant than there should be. Something like 13 Japanese / Chinese restaurants for 5000 people.
11:31 Offering things people want or need isn't ugly...and especially they over there think it's great. ❤
Thanks for your clear and interesting explanation of the origins of Luxembourg. I think that the Luxembourg side of the street celebrates "stroads" from mid-America.
Kind of ironic. It's a 1:50 hr drive from me and I never been there.
I guess it needs to get on the bucketlist. 😅
I love Martelange. Basically always stopped here for fuel on the way to Spain from The Netherlands, I immediately recognized the town in the thumbnail!
Greetings from Luxembourg (the country) - hail if you need anything anytime
Right behind the corner of DPS market :D
My favorite cigarette and liquer shop
‘These dorks love a treaty’ 😂😭
I'm so used to seeing the delhaize logo as a food lion logo it kinda threw me for a loop.
Extra info: belgian student buses load up not just on fuel but also beers when going skiing in january
oh, I've seen this one while goofing around on Google Street View. gave me a good laugh when I started counting the stations 😅
Oh man, I used to live near here. Pass by all the petrol station when taking the bus to school.
It’s really the only exciting thing in the area lol.
One of my favorite examples of different laws creating weird markets like this is that until recently my state of Georgia had fairly strict firework laws, but states like Alabama and South Carolina don’t. The result? You cross the border and immediately off any major highway there is most likely going to be a massive firework store.
@7:55 Two countries and an Italian sports car manufacturer. No surprise that it ended up with twelve gas/petrol stations.
immediately recognized the road, due to the alcohol shop behind 😂
Driver: **goes to Luxembourg**
Everyone: want some diesel? we got plenty
About a fortnite ago I did a road trip from the UK to Austria for skiing and we literally added an hour of detour (and the "Joy" of Belgian roads...) to our already 22 hour journey so we could save £30 on fuel and about £50 of péage per car for the journey
Fun fact about Martelange : there was a huge chain reaction of explosions at the petrostations in the 60s or 70s there. To my knowledge, it is also the only one that occured in Europe, maybe even the world.
I remember my last trip through Martelange, I got fined for speeding 10 km above the limit
Like as always!
I live in the commune of Rambrouch, which includes Martelange, and I’m really happy to see a bit of history about western Luxembourg here. Speaking of history and the various powers that influenced Luxembourg, there’s a wonderful small exhibition at the Musée Dräi Eechelen in Luxembourg City about the controversial Luxembourg Federal Contingent. I really recommend checking it out. Unfortunately, it’s only running until March 22.
As a former Arlon to Luxembourg-ville commuter I approve of this message
I will just have to say this. You have become the next tom Scot in all but flesh, it’s so refreshing to have someone traveling around to gawk and research interesting things around the world. Big thanks maaan 🎉
Don't know if you already know him, but the Tim Traveler is also great in this way.
@MinorZero oh yeah he covered Luxembourg's highest point that changed 3 or 4 times with development of measuring technologies lol
Nice video.
If you fancy another trip to Luxemburg you could do one on its eastern border: the river there belongs to both Luxemburg ánd Germany. Sort of overlapping borders.
Oh Sh* !
Near my old place!
That was a great video! It reminded me a lot of fun memories around there!
Now I live in Japan, your videos are great, and I can relate to them a lot!
Thank you very much! I wish you great thing for the next ones!
today I found out there's two luxembourgs
Berchem gas Station is like a hithchiking hyperport as many many long distancer drivers come through to fill up
As Belgium ALSO has a lot of fuel stations on its far longer Dutch border too ....
Booze sold at a petrol station, how smart! It can only lead to good things!
Actually, booze is sold at a lot of petrol stations in Europe. But it's often more expensive than buying it in the supermarket.
Thought it was going to be Breezewood, PA
You are amazing. Full stop.
Quite interesting!