Work Text:
May 4th, 2019
The Netherlands wakes up slowly on this Sunday. The few trains running across the country aren’t very crowded. Yet, in one of them, a passenger is determined to make history for her country today.
Her name is Mymy Schoppenboer. She’s heading to Tilburg, in North Brabant, with a very specific goal in mind. She’s not alone in her mission: her best friend and rival, Kiki, is with her.
While Kiki sleeps, her head leaning against the window, Mymy is lost in thought, still going over her plan.
Suddenly, her phone vibrates. A message from one of her friends, Cato:
“You know, you can still turn back. We won’t blame you. I’ve always said this was a bad idea. ”
Mymy doesn’t even bother replying to what she sees as a demoralizing message.
A few minutes later, another text pops up:
“Let me know which juvenile detention center you end up in, so I can bring you... oranges, lol! ”
This one’s from Bert, another friend from school. Outraged by his provocative tone, she can’t help but reply:
“ ...you can forget about the Ministry of the Economy when I come to power. ”
Arrival at Tilburg station is in five minutes. The orange-haired teen wakes up her pirate friend:
“Hey! Up and at it, matey! No slacking on a historic day like this!”
“Huuuuuuummmmmmmmmmm… you’re waking me up at 5 a.m. on a Sunday. At least let me save a few more minutes of sleep...”
Once she’s a bit more awake, Kiki adds:
“And come on, this might be your idea, but I was the one who ‘borrowed’ my dad’s power washer.”
“Yeah, because my parents don’t have one! Otherwise I would’ve taken care of it myself,” Mymy retorts.
“And why are we going back to Baarle anyway? It didn’t work last time, remember?”
“Yeah, but that time was different. We occupied some random empty enclave in the middle of nowhere. That’s why nobody paid attention. This time, we’ll be in the town itself .”
Mymy’s plan is clear: to seize the Belgi*n part of Baarle and unite the town under the Dutch crown.
Once they arrive in Tilburg, they hop on a bus to Baarle.
About thirty minutes later, they reach Baarle-Nassau, the Dutch part of the town, where Maya was born over sixteen years ago.
Mymy takes Kiki to a specific spot. Once they arrive on a street near the town center, Mymy points to a particular building.
“Kiki, this is the building where my parents lived, and where my sister was born. One time, we passed by their old apartment while coming back from, pardon my French, Belgi*m . And I managed to remember where it was. For the story: Maya was born in the apartment, she didn’t wait to make it to a Dutch hospital. She was born in Belgi*m.”
Kiki looks at the apartment, which stands out from the other houses on the street, then asks:
“Tell me, Mymy… is the apartment on the Dutch side?”
Indeed, the building had two entrances: one on the Dutch side, the other on the Belgi*n side. They were separated by a painted line on the ground marking the border.
Mymy recalled what her mother had said the day she showed them the apartment. She pointed to a window and explained:
" My parents and Maya lived here. "
" So, if I understand correctly, the apartment was on the Dutch side. " Kiki concluded.
" Yes. " Mymy replied.
Kiki continued:
" And your sister... was she born in Baarle-Nassau or Baarle-Hertog? "
" Baarle-Nassau, why? "
" Then why do you always say your sister is Belgi*n? She was born in an apartment in Baarle-Nassau, so on the Dutch side. "
Suddenly, Mymy’s world crumbled beneath her feet. For years, she had built this inner narrative where her sister was Belgi*n because she was born on the “wrong” side of the border. On top of that, she had confused Baarle-Nassau and Baarle-Hertog for years, thinking the former belonged to Belgi*m. And now, her certainties collapsed in seconds, swept away by two simple questions from her best friend.
Mymy looked very awkward, caught red-handed in a historical mistake.
She tried to save face by changing the subject:
"Yes… uh… well… anyway, that’s not the point. Baarle will become 100% Dutch today, and my sister will officially have been born in the Netherlands."
She asked Kiki to prepare the pressure washer and ordered her to erase the painted border on the ground, the one that split the apartment in two. Kiki took the opportunity to pull out a balaclava and put it on her head.
"What are you doing?" asked Mymy.
"I want to stay discreet." Kiki replied.
"But Kiki! We’re supposed to take control of the whole town of Baarle and send a message to the world! We can’t be discreet in a situation like this!" Mymy shot back.
Kiki put the balaclava away and turned on the pressure washer. Despite the high pressure, the paint wouldn’t come off.
Mymy was irritated by this first setback.
"Kiki... why isn’t it working?"
Kiki, puzzled, examined the ground.
"I don’t get it... we thought a pressure washer would clean the ground and erase the markings..." then added, "I say we try somewhere else."
The two girls headed for the town center. They stopped in front of a restaurant where the border passed just to the right of the building.
Kiki turned the washer on again, but stopped after a few seconds.
"What is it now?" asked Mymy, increasingly impatient with all the setbacks.
"I think the tank is empty." said Kiki.
"Already?"
"Well, yeah... I only put in a few liters... I wasn’t going to haul a pressure washer filled with 20 liters of water all the way here. It was too heavy." the pirate replied.
"And you’re telling me this now? Are you kidding me?!" Mymy exclaimed.
They went to find a water source to refill the washer. Once it was full, the two teens returned to the town center, carrying the device together. Indeed, with 20 liters of water, it was far too heavy for one person.
Back by the restaurant, Kiki turned on the pressure washer again. Unfortunately, just like before, the paint marking the border between the Netherlands and Belgi*m wouldn’t budge.
Mymy took the washer herself:
"Everything has to be done by me..." she grumbled.
She too realized it wasn’t working.
Meanwhile, a passerby with a Belgi*n accent congratulated them:
"Good job, girls! Thanks for keeping the town clean!"
Feeling humiliated by a Belgi*n, who had just reduced her to the level of a municipal cleaning worker, Mymy turned off the washer and gave up on that idea.
She opened the backpack she had been carrying all day, which was filled with Dutch flags, and pulled one out before explaining the next phase of the plan to Kiki:
" Now for part two of the plan: we’re going to replace all the Belgi* n flags with Dutch ones, to mark our territory."
To the right of the restaurant was a church. Near that church stood a commemorative plaque written in Polish and Dutch. Two flags flew next to the memorial: the European Union flag and the Belgi*n one. Mymy and Kiki headed toward the Belgi*n flag.
But upon closer inspection, a new problem emerged: the two girls couldn’t find any way to reach the mechanism that would let them lower the Belgi*n flag to replace it with the Dutch one.
Once again, the plan wasn’t going as expected.
" What do we do now? " asked Kiki.
Mymy thought for a moment, then suggested:
" We need a ladder! "
" Good idea," replied Kiki, " but… where can we get one? "
" What if we bought one? " Mymy suggested.
" Mymy… it’s Sunday, and on Sundays stores are closed. We won’t find a single hardware store open today. Unless one of the tobacco shops on the Belgi* n side, which are open, happens to sell ladders."
Another disappointment for Mymy. But she refused to be discouraged, that just wasn’t her style. So, she adapted:
“What if we go to the town hall? Maybe it’ll be easier to lower the flags there. And most importantly, I’ll follow up with my speech to declare the takeover of the territory.”
“Great idea! Let’s go together!” Kiki cheered, happy that her best friend always managed to find a solution to the problems they’d faced since their arrival.
Kiki pulled out her smartphone and typed “town hall” into Google Maps. She told Mymy it wasn’t far, not even a minute’s walk.
After a short stroll, they arrived in front of the building. But a new problem arose: there were no Belgi*n flags at all, only Dutch ones.
“Huh? Did someone else have the same idea as us?” Kiki wondered naively.
Mymy, on the other hand, immediately understood the situation and corrected her friend with a sarcastic tone:
“Kiki… you didn’t forget to check something, did you? I think you picked the wrong town hall… This is Baarle-Nassau, not Baarle-Hertog! You landlubber of a pirate!”
Kiki sheepishly apologized to her friend.
But faced with the ridiculousness of the situation, Mymy burst out laughing. Her laughter was so contagious that it made Kiki laugh too.
“Hahahahahahahaha! That’s why you’re my best friend: for all these stories we share together,” Mymy confessed.
“Hahahahahahahaha! It’s true, it’s never boring with you,” Kiki replied, still laughing.
“Alright! Let’s get serious again and head to the real town hall.”
Kiki corrected her search, and together they made their way to the Baarle-Hertog town hall. After a bit less than ten minutes of walking, they reached a building in the middle of nowhere. Worse yet: the Belgi*n town hall directly faced the Netherlands, a mistake Mymy was eager to correct.
Luckily, several Belgi*n flags were raised in front of the town hall, and more importantly, the mechanism to lower them was accessible to the two teenagers. Mymy took the time to remove the Belgi*n flags and replace them with Dutch ones. She also took down a Flemish flag, which had done nothing wrong, and replaced it with the flag of her country.
Mymy even tried to burn the Belgi*n flags using a lighter. But they turned out to be flame-resistant, in line with EU regulations designed to prevent flags from catching fire.
Once the job was done, she admired her work: the Baarle-Hertog town hall was now under Dutch control. Finally, a victory for Mymy and Kiki!
The orange-haired teenager could now move on to the next step of her plan. She pulled out a megaphone from another backpack, carried by Kiki, and delivered the following speech:
“Dear residents of Baarle,
It is with the greatest honor that I announce that a historical and geographical error has been corrected on this glorious day, May 4, 2019.
For centuries, this town has been shamefully split in two. And in 1830, during the independence of Belgi*m, the borders were not adjusted, leaving part of this city unjustly cut off from civilization.
Our demand, which sought only unity, was arbitrarily rejected by the Belgi*n Parliament in 1893. This left a deep sense of injustice among our Dutch compatriots.
But today, I, Mymy Schoppenboer, bring you this message of unity. I have just taken control of the invader’s town hall by replacing its impostor flags!
And I now call on all the people of Baarle to rise up against the Belgi*n authorities. So that we can finally be free.
RISE UP!
LONG LIVE UNITED BAARLE!
LONG LIVE THE NETHERLANDS!”
This speech, though moving, didn’t seem to be heard by anyone, except for a man walking his Belgi*n Malinois.
Mymy, however, was expecting a joyful crowd to gather and cheer on their liberator. But instead, a person stepped out of the town hall.
What neither Mymy nor Kiki knew was that the Belgi*n town hall also housed a police station shared by both countries. The megaphone speech had drawn the attention of a Belgi*n police officer, who had come to see what was going on. He noticed the discarded Belgi*n and Flemish flags on the ground, replaced with Dutch ones.
He approached Mymy and calmly asked:
“What are you doing, young ladies? Why are these flags on the ground? And why were you shouting into a megaphone?”
Mymy turned around, delighted:
“Ah! Finally, the first person to join our cause! We are here to reclaim full sovereignty over the territory of Baarle in the name of the Netherlands!”
The officer frowned.
“I think what you’ve actually done is commit an act of vandalism. Please come with me.”
At that moment, Mymy realized the man was a Belgi*n officer, and he had come to arrest her. She immediately shouted an order:
“Kiki! Use your pressure washer to repel the Belgi*n forces!”
But nothing happened.
Mymy turned around… and saw Kiki fleeing across the fields. The pirate had abandoned her best friend, unwilling to risk being caught.
“KIKI! YOU TRAITOR! I’LL REMEMBER THIS!” Mymy screamed.
Stunned by this betrayal, she tried to make sense of it:
“Why did she do that to me?... Do you think she’s still mad about that time I gave the police the location of her AK-47 stash as a joke?”
The officer was getting closer. Mymy then pulled out her last card: her weapon!
Problem: it was still her toy rifle, and the only ammo she had were foam darts.
The officer, unimpressed (much like Vera had been when Mymy threatened to launch a “Schoolocaust”), seized the toy and proceeded to detain her.
In one last desperate scream, Mymy shouted:
“HELP ME, PEOPLE OF BAARLE! COME TO MY AID! BELGEN ZIJN GEEN RAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSS!”
And so, Mymy Schoppenboer’s attempted invasion of Baarle ended in miserable failure. It would go down as one of the worst annexation attempts in history, on par with André Gardes’ 1990 attempt to conquer the island of Sark.[¹]
Despite the diplomatic incident caused, the Dutch ambassador to Belgi* m was summoned by the Belgi*n foreign minister, Mymy got off with just a warning. The charges were minor.
Nevertheless, she was harshly scolded by her parents for this latest "achievement." She was grounded for several weeks and forced to attend therapy. That seemed to have some effect, as Mymy began to mellow out from that point onward (though things were far from perfect).
Later that day, Kiki returned home. Her parents, furious, asked why she had left so early without telling anyone, and especially why she had taken their pressure washer without permission. Her explanation was far from convincing. She was immediately sent to her room as punishment.
That same evening, during the news broadcast, her parents discovered what had really happened.
“Good evening.
We return now to the attempted invasion of Baarle-Hertog carried out this morning by two teenage girls.
One of them has been detained and is currently in police custody. She claims her actions were in the name of Dutch unity.
The other teenager is currently wanted by the authorities.
Masked and armed with a pressure washer, she reportedly threatened a motorist north of Baarle-Nassau.
The young girl, dressed like a pirate, was last seen in Tilburg.”