I'm a simple emigrant and I love all the best

Those who, as kids, used to crawl into places they shouldn’t know the rule: if the head goes through, the rest of the body will too. So, if your head is smaller than 31 cm, congratulations! You’ll be able to pass through the world’s narrowest street. To my surprise, I learned that Spreuerhofstraße is in Germany, in the town of Reutlingen. And it is an official Guinness World Record holder. The length of this alley is just under four meters. Its widest point there is 50 cm, and the narrowest is just 31 cm. That’s a little bigger than a good Armenian nose! In 1726 a great fire swept through the city, destroying a ton of buildings. And when rebuilding began, two neighbors built their houses literally right up against each other. You might ask why this gap is called a full street? We’re in Germany. Everything must be orderly, otherwise there’d be paralysis and uncertainty, and people wouldn’t know what to do with it. To avoid potential problems, the city said: hands off, this is our land! Good that the authorities marked it clearly, otherwise in a year or two one neighbor would widen his kitchen, the other would install a door and park his bicycles. And then they’d be suing each other for a hundred years over whose 30 cm it is. But there is a more serious reason. After that very fire, the authorities tried to avoid dense development so that the fire wouldn’t jump so quickly from building to building, and registered the street as a fire break. So no romance, just plain pragmatism. But it managed almost by accident to become such a cool attraction for tourists. Now the local administration is seriously worried about the condition of these two houses, because if one of the walls leans inward by even a couple of centimeters, the passage will cease to exist. People would have to exit onto the street through someone’s window, you can’t go around the houses! In short, claustrophobes, stay far away, and for everyone else: add this trip to your summer to-do list. #German_trips