Prevailing wisdom suggests any chunks of time spent online will be steeped in outrage, anger and division. I recently spent a bit of time online and experienced none of the above. As an added bonus I learned quite a few apparently unrelated facts.
When is a condominium not a condominium? What is the email address for the Austrian Consul-General in BC? And what country governs Pheasant Island?
These are just some of the questions whose answers I learned on my recent random walk. And if you manage to read to the end of this post, you too will learn the answers to these questions and so much more…
It all started when I wanted to find out if there were any diplomatic offices in the building at 800 Pender. (But I’ll save that story for another day.) It turns out the BC Provincial Government keeps a comprehensive list of all consular offices in the province. Well done BC Government.
It turned out there are no consular offices at 800 Pender, but holy cow, the email addresses were all over the map. To be fair, about half of them were explicitly affiliated with the home country government. eg, El Salvador
Of the remainder, they seemed to fall into two categories. In the first category, the email seemed to be the personal email of the consul general, using one of the usual providers (eg. gmail, outlook, shaw.ca etc.) Well done Jamaica scoring a free sfu email address.
The third category is email addresses associated with website that is to some degree dedicated to the consul office. eg Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).
This got me wondering, what do I see if I go to bcbih.com? It’s a pretty snazzy website, with sections for Tourism, the CV of the Consul, investing in BiH, and investing in RS… Wait, what the heck is RS? Oh, the Republic of Srpska. Wait, what the heck is the Republic of Srpska, and who stole all their vowels?!
It turns out (according to Wikipedia) Republic of Srpska (RS) is an entity within BiH. It further turns out BiH contains 2 entities of roughly the same geographical area:
- Republic of Srpska (primarily populated by ethnic Serbs)
- Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (primarily populated by Bosniaks, and to a lesser extent Croats)
I was definitely not aware that BiH was divided geographically and ethnically in this way. If somebody told me Bosnia and Herzegovina was composed of two approximately same-sized entities, I’d have guessed one was Bosnia, the other Herzegovina. Wrong! Bosnia and Herzegovina is composed of Srpska and Bosnia Herzegovina. I had so many questions here, but I got distracted by Brčko. (pink in the map above)
It turns out Brčko is a condominium. Wait, what? According to Wikipedia, this flavour of condominium is defined as: a territory … in or over which multiple sovereign powers formally agree to share equal dominium … and exercise their rights jointly, without dividing it into “national” zones.
It’s like joint custody, but for countries instead of parents. Antarctica and Post-WWII Germany are two high profile examples of condominia. Wikipedia includes an impressive list of the current condominia. The one that caught my eye was Pheasant Island.
Pheasant Island is near the mouth of a river (Bidasoa) that defines the border of France and Spain. According to Wikipedia, Pheasant Island became a condominium when the Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed in 1659. According to the treaty the island lives with Spain from 1 February until 31 July. For the remainder of the year (1 August until 31 January) it lives with papa France.
In a world where things seem fairly firmly bolted down, geopolitically, I love the fact that there are quirky things like islands that switch from one country to another every six months.
Again, according to Wikipedia “there are no pheasants on Pheasant Island.” I wonder if there are any condos…