Go home Fritz

Franco-German Friendship Treaty turns 50 today.

Hailed as an enormous accomplishment, the 22 Jan. 1963 treaty is regarded as a milestone in Franco-German relations after WW II.

Talk about a crisis in Franco-German relations in the face of the debt/euro/unemployment situation can be found just as readily as reports with some more historical depth.

The main K-landnews contributors live in a region that went back a couple of times between France and Germany in the last two centuries or so. To many folks here, the sidewalk (German: Bürgersteig) continues to be a French trottoir, only the emphasis on the first "o" making it German. Some living rooms still have portraits of Napoleon, so we hear.


After two World Wars in less than 100 years, the border between France and Germany today has fewer checkpoints than the Oregon California border, where every southbound vehicle gets stopped and checked for vegetables, fruit and plants.

Cross border comedy is doing fine, and the French even have a successful rapper (fr.: rappeur) named Helmut Fritz, whose completely fabricated biography you can read here.

The man was born and raised French and is so utterly convincing that some of his more critical songs attracted "go home Fritz" chants.

In case you wonder what the Germans do about the fried potato strips that caused such outrage in the US, no need to worry.

The taters do not have a country of origin in their German name, which is simply their native name "Pommes Frites" (deep fried potatoes)  or "Pommes" or "Fritten", or -- we are not making this up -- sound like "Pommes Fritz".

We'll celebrate with  "Laissez les bons temps rouler!"