Qualla: Vaals

Vaals: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gabriele Delhey, CC BY-SA 3.0. Stand on top of the Vaalserberg, 322.4 meters above sea level, and you are at the highest point in the European Netherlands. This is not a high mountain. It would barely register as a hill anywhere else. But this is the Netherlands, and from this modest summit you can take three steps and stand in Belgium, three more and stand in Germany, and stay where you were and remain in the Netherlands. This is the Drielandenpunt, the three-country point. Until 1919 it was a four-country point, because for almost exactly a century there was a strange little neutral territory called Moresnet wedged in here, a place nobody quite owned because no one could agree on who should. Geography is rarely this strange, and almost never this small.

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Image: Gabriele Delhey | CC BY-SA 3.0

Vaals: In Vallis

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit a m, CC BY 2.0. Vaals is first mentioned in documents in 1041, when Emperor Henry III donated the land to the St. Adalbert Abbey. To distinguish this new abbey holding from the nearby city of Aachen, the Latin charter referred to it as in Vallis, in the valley, and the name stuck. It makes Vaals...

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Image: a m | CC BY 2.0

Vaals: Linen for the Tsar

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Braggeleer at Dutch Wikipedia, Public domain. In 1661 Vaals became part of the Republic of the United Netherlands and began an unlikely industrial boom. Wealthy families moved in, attracted by the location at the border of Prussia and the United Provinces, and the most prominent of them were the Von Clermonts. They came from...

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Image: Braggeleer at Dutch Wikipedia | Public domain

Vaals: The Owls of Vaals

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Henry Peters, CC BY 3.0 nl. When the borders closed before and during World War II, Vaals became isolated. After the war they reopened, commerce picked up, and so did smuggling. Coffee, cigarettes, butter, sugar, anything subject to different prices on different sides of the line. The smugglers who carried ...

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Image: Henry Peters | CC BY 3.0 nl

Vaals: Vijlen, the Mountain Village

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Romaine, CC0. Up the hill from Vaals lies Vijlen, the second-largest settlement in the municipality, perched on the Vijlenerberg at almost 200 meters above sea level. Vijlen calls itself the only mountain village in the Netherlands, an exaggeration that almost no one disputes because there is ...

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Image: Romaine | CC0