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January 18, 2008

The Knife

A couple of nights ago myself and two of my North American colleagues were getting ready to leave the office in Breisach, Germany and go to dinner. It was about 7:30 in the evening. Most of the Germans keep a fairly regular 9-5 schedule and most of the office had already packed up and left for the evening. We didn't have keys to lock up and so I went searching to see if there was anyone besides us who was left aside from us.

I found someone and asked him if he wouldn't mind locking up behind us. He said, "no, problem."

I jokingly replied, "great! I can tell this is a dangerous neighborhood and I didn't want to leave the place open." The office is surrounded on one side by a cornfield. The city is filled with old people with yellowing fingernails.

To my surprise he raised his eyebrows and said, "you heard?"

"No, heard about what?" I replied.

He said, very seriously, "once I found a knife on the ground, in front of the building."

I chuckled a bit, "a knife, that doesn't seem so bad." I imaged from the amount of hunters in the area it would not be all that uncommon to find such a thing.

"...and a few meters away a dead Frenchman."

He went on to tell me that such things are not uncommon in Breisach because, after all, Breisach is a border town separated from France only by a single bridge over the river Reine. There is a disco not far from the office and sometimes it seems people take their grudges with them across the river.

Posted by jordanh at January 18, 2008 8:39 AM

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