Büsingen am Hochrhein is a German municipality of about 1,548 people and 7.62 square kilometers entirely enclosed by the Swiss cantons of Schaffhausen, Zurich and Thurgau, separated from the rest of Germany by a strip of Swiss land just 680 meters wide at its narrowest. This episode describes daily life on a border marked by 123 boundary stones, where residents have both German and Swiss phone prefixes, two postal codes, and, in the hamlet of Stemmer, an international line running down the middle of the street.

The conversation traces the exclave to a 1693 dispute in which Austrian lord Eberhard im Thurn was kidnapped by Schaffhausen authorities, hardening a grudge that survived Napoleon, the German Empire and a 1918 referendum in which 96 percent of residents voted to join Switzerland. It covers World War II soldiers disarming and donning  ...