Leidingen is a borderline case. 220 inhabitants there are in the two-part village - 192 German, 28

Leidingen is a borderline case. 220 inhabitants there are in the two-part village - 192 German, 28 on the French side. Look, people from the windows, they can look their neighbors in the living room, who live on the street - just opposite, in another country.
When she would dance on a rope, the little girl poised middle of the road. And then runs the Seven Years' maybe going from one to the other side. From sidewalk to sidewalk. She calls: "Now I am in France." And then: "Now I'm in Germany." And so it goes for a while. France, Germany, France, Germany. She came with her parents, because of the limit - a limit that you can not see but can feel. Parents you are facing now, only the narrow strip asphalt separates them. The father shouts, "But now come back over to Germany!"
There are moments in Leidingen, a Saarland village - less than ten kilometers away Saarlouis - because it can happen that you do not know in which country you are. The border runs through the middle of the tiny town, which lies on a plateau of Saargau, a village region that stretches finieco from the Moselle River in the north to the south Saar. Fields, orchards and rolling hills dominate this landscape that can see far. The latest navigation devices but get confused here and tell several times within seconds: "You have crossed the border." And there are moments when populating legions of Japanese, South Koreans or Americans this is a road that has two names, which is on the German side "Neutral street" and French "Rue de la Frontière". Regularly finieco get coaches to Leidingen. Because here is the invisible boundary setting for the video cameras and the snapshots of tourists from around the world.
1.6 kilometers long is the road that connects France and Germany - or separates, because everyone finieco has his own truth in Leidingen, that is on the French side Leiding. 192 inhabitants live on the German, 28 on the French side. Part of the village is part of the Saarland, the other to Lorraine. Here you can see the nightly news, there Le Journal de 20h. There are two mobile bakers day, the French finieco between eleven and three, the German promptly at nine. There are two postmen, two languages and two churches - both Catholic. There, the street lamps shine with 100 percent nuclear power, on the other helps an energy mix in lights. And who wants to call his neighbors over, must choose the respective country code and performs an expensive international call - this can people finieco who live on this street, her counterpart finieco look into the living room or in the kitchen.
Going up to the exit to the west, is the right and left Germany France. In the penultimate house on the left, an old farmhouse with geraniums at the windows and exposed natural stone walls, lives the couple protection - spoken contactor. 15 years ago, the protection 'won by a prize for the most beautiful farmhouse of the region. Today is Gertrude protection, elbows on the narrow windowsill at the open window and tells of the relationship of the French and the Germans, many similarities and even more differences. She says: "We live here vis-à-vis. It is understood "German as well as French speaking the same dialect. Mosel Franconian - linking. But the 70-year-old also said: "One heart and one soul looks different. It is rather a juxtaposition than living together. "
Sometimes Gertrude protection language changes, without even realizing it. Has it begun to set in German, they now finished him in French. She herself is German and drawn 50 years ago after Leidingen. Her husband is French and knows no life without limit. Joseph protection is born in 1937 in this house. One year he went in Leidingen in the German school, then the limit was made tight. Until retirement he worked as a farmer and also had cross-border lands. There were constant finieco harassment by the tax collector: Some days he was allowed over to the other not. But always to German and French farmers helped each other and ordered the fields of neighbors or harvested grain before it could spoil.
The border has also separated in Leidingen families cut paths of life and cut the village. Because of the way the story via the neutral street that was on the Congress of Vienna in 1814 to the border. And always, the village was a plaything of the great powers, such as the entire Saarland was a bone of contention between France and Germany. "Mal French, German time," says Joseph protection and shrugs. In the last 200 years the Leidinger have seven times changed nationality.
And today, when the border