My gift to eastern Belgium is a book I wrote in 2015, which has just been published in an updated and expanded new edition: ‘Streifzüge durchs östliche Belgien’. Through this book, I wish to draw the attention of German and German-speaking people to our region.
I would like to tell an anecdote from the book here; it was often and gladly told in my family. It goes like this:
In the 1920s, my maternal grandparents made a pilgrimage on foot from Aachen to Moresnet Chapel every Sunday. They always took their children with them, including my mother. It was a strenuous journey, but it had to be done. Of course, praying and lighting candles in the small St Mary’s Church were the main reasons, but there was another motive for the trips: many things were bought in Belgium that could not be bought in Germany in those years, or only at a high price. Even bread was brought back from there.
Shopping was not allowed, however, and so German customs officers, who apparently knew no mercy, patrolled the forest, even detaining children, who, of course, were used by their parents for smuggling.
I remember my grandmother as a role model from a picture book. However, once she exploded with rage. In the Preusswald, i.e. in the border area, the small trek, on that day consisting of my grandmother and the children, was stopped by a customs officer. He checked everything in the bags they were carrying, but found only rather insignificant smuggled goods, i.e. neither coffee nor tobacco nor alcohol. However, he did find several large loaves of white bread in the shopping bag. The customs officer ordered her to hand over the bread but my grandmother, knowing that the customs officers would eat the bread themselves, refused. There was a loud argument, during which the border guard kept demanding that the bag with the bread be handed over. Meanwhile, the children stood by, crying. Then my grandmother snapped. Shouting, ‘You won’t get them; I’ll piss on them first!’, she sat down across the bag on the ground with her skirt up and followed through with her threat.
I don’t remember how the story ended, but really it needs no other ending than this.
Archi W Bechlenberg
Gemmenich