Subject: Re: Capitals vs. Borders<br/>
Date: Oct 02, 2001 @ 23:02<br/>
Author: Grant Hutchison (&quot;Grant Hutchison&quot; &lt;granthutchison@...&gt;)<br/>
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<div id="ygrps-yiv-1884778402"><blockquote><span title="ireply">&gt; Maseru, the capital of Lesotho, is definitely very<br/>
&gt; near the border if not on it.<br/>
 </span></blockquote>Yep, another good one, and again on a river. Liechtenstein, too, has <br/>
a capital just across the river from another country. On the topic of <br/>
small countries, I don&#39;t know enough about San Marino - the capital <br/>
must be pretty close to the border, but how are the city limits <br/>
defined? (On that note, I do now wonder about Brunei, since the <br/>
capital seems to be a good few km up the coast from the border, <br/>
although I don&#39;t have a good enough map to detect urban sprawl.)<br/>
<br/>
It seems to me that if we exclude Vatican and Monaco as being <br/>
countries that are *all* capital, than almost all our examples <br/>
exhibit the propensity for towns and borders to gather at water <br/>
courses - given enough capital towns and enough borders, eventually <br/>
some of them are going to end up together. The one exception that <br/>
must have an interesting story is Lome in Togo, which seems to have <br/>
no particular reason to be wedged where it is, against a land border.<br/>
(Jerusalem too might shake down in all sorts of interesting ways, of <br/>
course, borderwise and everywise.)<br/>
<br/>
Grant</div>