At midnight last Friday, the few dozen residents of Gadheim in Northern Bavaria found themselves at the precise center of the European Union, and many were sad, because they had hoped that Britain would stay.
But, with the center shifting from another town some 60 kilometres away, they made their preparations even before it became clear that Brexit would actually happen. The municipality—too small even to have its own mayor—and a local landscape gardening school, cooperated in preparing the plot that marks the new center.
The marker is a boulder of local limestone with a red-and-white striped pole pointing toward the previous center and regional, German and European flags. For geo-freaks, it’s at 9°54’7″ east and 49°50’37” in a field owned by farmer Karin Kessler, who, when she first heard about the calculation in late March 2017, thought it was an April Fool’s joke.
