When came from Denver to Piennes one thing had changed.  There were no more borders.  I moved to an area that is near 3 different countries so the French call it the tri-border area:  one with Belgium, one with Luxembourg, one with Germany.  No, no the German don’t use parachutes anymore to come to France, they use cars like everyone else.  I haven’t gone to Belgium since the 70′s when young and foolish I was going there with friends trying to get lucky.  Now I only go to Luxembourg and Germany ’cause stuff is often way cheaper there.  Well there are lot less taxes in those countries so it does make sense.
I was quick to notice than clerks in various stores in those 2 countries weren’t very friendly with the French speaking customers.  But the first time I really noticed the difference was in a store called Batiself, a sort of Lowes Luxembourg version.  I was looking for some “Liquid Nails” and of course I didn’t know the European name for it.  So, taking my most goofy and stoopid look (trust me it’s easy job for me)(it’s almost natural), I told the young lady in English: in the US it’s called “liquid nails”.  She became friendlier, asking me also in English: you’re not French?  When she heard me say no, she became all smile taking me to the section of glues and show me something by Pattex called “ni clou ni vis” (no nails nor screws).   I was thrilled to find the stuff I was looking for I quickly forgot the English language incident.  Something similar happen to me few months later in Germany where I was looking for something for mother (yeah I buy all her beauty salon stuff too.  (Although she looks more like last year apple, Mother still buys all sorts of anti-wrinkle creams, like it’s gonna do something).  I asked a clerk at the store in my broken German but finished in English.  Same question as the Luxembourg girl and same reaction:  All smiles and flirtatious even.  In my mind I threw my fist at the sky for living so far.  By then I realized that French people’s money was welcome in stores across borders but the French weren’t.  So the next time I was in a store in Luxembourg looking for some Four Roses, my favorite Bourbon (OK it’s the only decent one I can find without driving 200 miles), I started chatting with the dude in charge of the liquor section of the store.  We talked about “Tullamore Dew”, an Irish whiskey  I enjoy occasionally when I told him English “triple distilled” in the middle of a conversation in French.  He looked surprised so I went on with my little diatribe.  When I told him I particularly appreciate Bulleit, he even told me he would try to find some for me.  No way he could find me some “Jefferson Reserve”.

In fact French are not really welcome anywhere.  They are for the most part very lazy.  They call in sick so often that the Luxembourg government now asks French workers in this country to get controlled by a Luxembourg doc to verify if they are really sick.  What does that tell you.

You don’t have to take my word for it anyway.

A Norwegian MP from the anti-immigration Progress Party has called on Norway to shut its borders to organised groups of Roma, Bulgarian and French people whom he accuses of being notorious criminals

More here

Somehow I wonder what the people of Narvik would have to say.  3 battalions of French Alpine troops fought there in 1940 alongside of Poles and Brits.  Even few Norwegians were there.
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First off, I would like to apologize to Michael Crichton for taking part of his title, but I’m sure he would mind reading what does follow.  The recent Boston event, the way it was handle by the police,  made me remember an event of my youth.  The year was 1959, which would have made me about that old.  There were no bus to go to school and my big brother (not the one described by Georges Orwell in 1984 or Yevgeny Zamyatin’s “We”), the real one was kind of babysitting me on the way.  Every morning at about 20 til 8, we would take off to go to school.  Depending on how much goofing of we did on the way, it would take us about 10 or 15 minutes to get there.  The month was October or maybe November.  I remember it was before November 11th, since we had not received our yearly “brioche”, a typical French pastry the town’s city council would pass around to all children in celebration of the end of WW1.   Perhaps that day we goofed off more than usually.  By the time we arrived by my brother junior High School, there was a huge explosion.

This view is from the back, not much has changed.

Glass flew off in all direction coming from my school which was also the town hall and  located across the plaza from the Junior High.   I was so scared I didn’t even think about shitting in my pants.  My legs were shaking and I had few cuts on my face.  Blood was running down my brother’s face also.  We ran back home.   Mother cleaned us up then whooped us because she didn’t believe our story and wanted to send us back to school.  The terrorists were from the FLN (National Liberation Front) an Algerian force trying to obtain independence.   I was too young to understand the concept of colonization.  One thing I was sure, I didn’t understand how killing kids would satisfy anyone’s need for independence.

Now one would ask how this story is relevant?  Well, I didn’t die from it.  Heck the impact of this bombing was very limited.  OK I agree I was lucky.  If the bastard who set this up knew better how to operate the timer, I would have been blown to smithereens.  But hey, I don’t even remember what month it happen.  What does that tell you.   Fact is I blocked all.  For 2 weeks I went to the girls school and I don’t even recall it.  I know because others told me so.  I think there is a trend to wussalize people today (OK I made up the word.  I own it.  If you want to use it you will have to pay me copyrights fee via paypal.  My ID is pass.the.dough@wannaberich.com).  What I really want to say we can’t quit living for someone stoopid and more so we can’t leave our protection to any government.  They’re too busy trying to save their own collective asses.  In Nietzsche famous words, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.  And he was right the proof is here.

Addendum:  Just found this article which proves my point.  Read it here.

Recently Mom asked me the meaning of a few words of the Polish National Anthem, which to my regret, I wasn’t able to answer right away but thanks to Wikipedia, I was able to do it quickly.  The words were “Marsz, Marsz Dabrowski, z zimie wloskiej do Polski” (March march Dabrowski, from the Italian land to Poland).  Of course from my Polish classes in grade and secondary school, I knew of Dabrowski, a polish general who left Poland at the time of the third partition of Poland.  But then as a teen, I didn’t pay much attention to the rest.  Our teacher was not really interested in the Napoleonic wars so maybe she skipped entirely the Polish Legion story entirely.  So Sad.  I would have loved to know the 20 to 30 000 men have fought alongside of Napoleon at least until 1803, most likely until the Russian campaign disaster.  And yet many years after, descendants of those soldiers were continuously mistreated in France, their children were often called “dirty Polak” in schools.  How do I know?  I was one of them.  Even in the US, Polish jokes are still common, and no one seems to know that a Polish general fought their freedom, leaving his pay to Jefferson to free his slaves.

In 1932 a Polish mathematician broke the first enigma machine and today no one even know who is Marian Rejewski.  He was 27.   Later, when Poland was occupied by Nazi forces, remnants of Polish army who escaped Staline’s murderous habits came to France and helped starting organize the first “resistance” movement against the invaders.   Polish cryptanalysts worked on the enigma way before a actual machine was found by British submariners, which Hollywood pictures as American.   And yet no one believed Polish people could do it.   At the battle of Monte Cassino, well allow me to let someone else  speak.

“The Battle of Monte Cassino was carried out in four stages by a vast number of regiments and divisions under the
banner of many nations, foremost Poland. The losses to men and material were staggering. It turned out to be
a “see-saw” battle, where Allies, having captured key German strongholds, lost it shortly thereafter to the enemy,
and then succeeded in recapturing it. It was not until the last phase of the Battle, when all other Allied efforts had
failed so dismally, that the II Polish Corps, under the command of Lt. General Wladyslaw Anders was finally
called into action. Their mission was to capture Monte Cassino and Piedimonte, which up until then could
not be achieved by any other military units. Now everything depended on the Poles.”

From here

Will there be a day when the right people will be recognized?  Just as Napoleon screwed the Polish Legion in 1803 at the treaty of Luneville, just as Jefferson screwed Kosciusko by taking his money to pay his debts instead of freeing his slaves, Churchill and Roosevelt screwed the Anders’ Army who took Monte Cassino with the Yalta treaty.
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OK in the past few weeks I seem to have disappear from Republiqueno6.  No, I wasn’t sick or anything but Mother was.  For the past couple of weeks, she was loosing appetite and was coughing a lot.  Fact is, couple of weeks ago she made me laugh my heart out.  It was on the 19 of March.  While coughing real hard she asked me would I drive to Luxembourg ’cause she was almost out of smokes.  Stubborn or maybe trying to catch attention she refused to see the doc.  It’s free for Pete’s sake.   It’s the socialist way.  You call and the doc comes to your home.  But no.  Mother wanted me to care for her.  I’m not particularly good with sick people.  I use natural stuff to heal.  I gave her vitamin C, magnesium, some cough sirup based on garlic honey and lemon (hello minty fresh breath).  Nothing seemed to work.  Finally on Monday morning I called the doc who send her to the hospital stat.

I followed quickly in my own car and made it to the ER.  Well knowing I wouldn’t see anyone from the famous series I still imagine people running all over with tired faces.  No Doug Ross, no Mark Greene, and more so, no Carol Hathaway.  At the end of a long empty corridor, a nurse was smoking with an ambulance driver.  She had a bigger mustache than mine.  I felt threatened in my machismo.  As soon as she saw she ran towards me, realized she was holding a cig, ran back put it down and came back to me screaming that I had nothing to do there, it was for patient and hospital members only, that I should be intelligent enough not to bring my bacterias to ER.

I was s’posed to wait in the … waiting room outside.  After 3 hours a doctor came out and called my family name.  She was cute, in a very British fashion.  Calmly she asked me several questions about mom.  When I told her she smokes almost 2 cartons of cigs a month she told me she didn’t know that.  She mentioned a scan, and a battery of tests and left.

Finally 5 hrs later, she was transferred to Geriatric.  I was thinking of meeting the same type of cold and indifferent nurses like in ER and I had the surprise of a lifetime.  Not only the nurses and other helpers were very competent, they were very kind, very involved in doing the best for their patients.

Although I’m not fond of social medicine, those guys did prove me they were a great bunch.  Now I’ve seen the behavior of some personnel in other services and trust me they weren’t the kind of people I wouldn’t trust with a common cold, but kudos to those Geriatrics’s.

Mom has been there for 10 days now and I’ve been at the hospital daily.  With all the oxygen she received she removed some of her cigs out of her lungs.  Hopefully she wont ask for more once home.