Photo: Etienne Naude
“I felt that I was making something bigger than me,” said Angel Sierra (right) after he and Etienne Naude made the Earth into a sandwich with pieces of bread 8,000 miles apart.
I love any attention-getting gag meant to show we are all part of one world. This story describes a feat that seems silly on the surface, but draws attention to something deep. Eight thousand miles deep.
As Owen Amos reported at the BBC in January, “Two men in New Zealand and Spain have created an ‘Earth sandwich’ — by placing bread on precise points, either side of the planet, at the same time.
“The man behind the sandwich, Etienne Naude from Auckland, told the BBC he wanted to make one for ‘years,’ but had struggled to find someone in Spain, on the other side of the globe. He finally found someone after posting on the online message board, Reddit.
“The men used longitude and latitude to make sure they were precisely opposite. That meant there was around 12,724km (7,917 miles) of Earth packed between the slices — and some 20,000km between the men, for those forced to travel the conventional route.
“The first ‘Earth sandwich’ is credited to the American artist Ze Frank, who organised two slices of baguette to be placed in New Zealand and Spain in 2006. …
“Wanting to create his own, Mr Naude, 19, used an online longitude and latitude tool called ‘tunnel to the other side of the Earth’ to find his exact opposite point. …
“He posted on the Spain section of the online message board Reddit. He got ‘a few replies’ and found one person close to the precise location.
Angel Sierra, a 34-year-old chef, told the BBC he replied to the message because ‘it can help to show how people can work together across the globe … I felt that I was making something bigger than me.’ …
“Once the men were in contact, then came the tricky part — making a sandwich with another person when you are on opposite sides of the planet.
” ‘It was quite hard to organise since it’s 12-hour time difference,’ Mr Naude said. ‘And there’s lots of things to arrange, such as the kind of bread, the time, the [precise] location, et cetera. … It’s quite tough to find a spot which isn’t water on the New Zealand end — and where public roads or paths intersect in both sides.’ …
“Using a ‘near top of the range laser cutter,’ he burnt an ‘Earth sandwich’ design onto 20 slices of bread, then used one slice to mark his exact, tightly defined sandwich spot in New Zealand.
“His counterpart used nine slices of unmarked bread to make sure he covered the exact spot. …
“The scientific name for points opposite each other on the Earth’s surface is antipodes … According to World Atlas, only around 15% of ‘territorial land’ is antipodal to other land. The UK, Australia and most of the US do not have antipodal land points — the other side of the world is water. More at the BBC, here.
Naude was later reported saying, “It’s also quite nice to just know that there is someone at the exact opposite point of the world that has done exactly the same thing as you. In this one particular instance, we’ve got entirely different lives, but we are now connected by this one point.”
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