From Germany to France in just a few seconds

France-Germany border

Today after lunch our blog team separated and went for 2 little trips. First group went to Freiburg, and our team decided to visit Neuf Brisach, small town near Breisach. The interesting thing is that Neuf- Brisach is about 10 minutes away with a car, but it is in the completely other country- France. This is strange to me because the border is actually a bridge. There is no police or anything that could make you experience that border. So, now I can tell that I was in a France too.

This is huge news for me because I’m used to it that I can’t move anywhere away from my country if I don’t have passport. I live in Zagreb (Croatia) but during summer vacation I go back to my hometown Dubrovnik and in order to get home I must show my passport twice. Zagreb and Dubrovnik are in the same country- Croatia, but if I want to come to my hometown I will drive for 15 minutes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, our neighbor country. You must stop in both borders, wait in line of cars to show your passport to the custom official and you always loose some time on that. Here is so much different, you don’t even feel that you’re in another country and that you crossed the border.

After entrance in France there is no big difference. Landscape is the same as everything else, except registration on cars which are now French ones, not German any more. The border thing is interesting for me because everything seems so easy and friendly and it seems to me like there is a good coexistence and cooperation. So here I find a difference if I compare it to with my country. I must admit that this is so much better, an example that even when you’re crossing to another country you can feel there like you’re home, and don’t need to wait for someone to approve it to you. Our idea was to find people in a town and to ask them about life in this town, relations with Germany and talk with them about themes we’re discussing at our seminars. The problem is that the town was almost empty. Streets, shops, cafe bars and main square- completely empty. We were little disappointed and tried to find someone to speak with us but unfortunately unsuccessfully. Even when we found few people we had a language problem- nobody was speaking English.

Entrance to the Neuf- Brisach

It is well known that lots of French people go to Germany to work, so maybe that could be a part of answer to the question: “Where are people in this town?” . As we heard, it is combination of perfect life: in Germany salaries are bigger, and in France prices of houses are lower. I must admit that here people made a great combination of both countries and found a great way to get along.






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The project "Celebrate the Difference!" is co-financed from the EU programme YOUTH in Action, German national agency.