Lotharingien or "Wo verläuft die Bildungsgrenze in Deutschland?" :-)

Now Belgium has set the world record of being without a government, maybe it is about time to start considering alternatives...

Once while riding from Münster to Düsseldorf I put forward a question to Raimund Stecker, that an acquaitance had made up during a game of Trivial Pursuit. So in jest I asked Raimund: "Wo verläuft die Bildungsgrenze in Deutschland?" (Where is the borderline of learning in Germany situated?) and I also gave the alleged answer : "Linksrheinisch" (left the river Rhine). Though to me this was only a silly joke, Raimund took this seriously and stated that  he considered people living left the Rhine being far better educated than in the rest of Germany and he added that he even had a girlfriend from Aachen once.

Going back in history, there appears a country, a dream on the map, Lotharingien, the realm of Emperor Lothar/ Lothair, the land inbetween rivers Rhine and Maas, neither French nor German, but rather both. And what a surprise that once while watching TV I learned that Sebastian Haffner had been sharing the same dream, when he was considering post-war Germany after and during WW2.

Btw once there was also the question was raised what language there was spoken in Belgium. Before I could utter any word, a woman, whom I knew for a frequent visitor to Aachen, said: "Belgian." LOL!! How wonderful it is to sit at a table during a family celebration near Eupen in Belgium, and everybody is speaking his respective language, i e  French, German and Flemish/Dutch, and everybody is understanding everybody...