Word: strasbourgers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Sprawled along the left bank of the Rhine River on the French-German frontier, the ancient city of Strasbourg (pop. 250,000), typifies the jarring blend of old and new that is Europe today. Thick-walled 17th century fortresses, built by the great French engineer Vauban, and a toweringly spired Gothic cathedral look down on postwar synthetic-rubber factories and petrochemical plants. Although 300 miles from the North Sea, Strasbourg is France's largest port for exports; Common Market-bred prosperity has all but erased old fears that the city might once again become the object of French-German...
...Alsatian wine-barrel maker, has changed nationalities five times in her long life. She was born French, but became German in 1870 when Bismarck's army marched across the Rhine and took possession of Alsace and Lorraine. She remained German until 1918, when the French returned to Strasbourg. In 1940 Hitler made her German again, and in 1944 she was back where she began, a citizen of the French Republic. "My only wish," she says, at the age of 108, "is not to change again. I want to die French...
...basic and how fundamental is immediately evident in the boomtown prosperity of Strasbourg, which has capitalized on its schizophrenic past in planning its European future. It not only exports most of its products -chiefly synthetic rubber and machine tools-but it also draws on the German Wirtschaftswunder for its own development. More than 26,000 Alsatians cross the Rhine daily to work in German and Swiss plants. Conversely, 10,000 Germans drive into Alsace every day, many to load up on cheaper French food...
Twenty years ago, Strasbourgers would have found it impossible to seek better-paying jobs in the neighboring German river towns of Kehl and Offenburg. Even vacation trips across the Rhine involved complicated visa forms and meticulous custom searches. The Common Market has changed all that. "A lot of young people in Europe take open borders for granted," said a French customs official at the 13-year-old Europe Bridge that connects Strasbourg and Kehl. "They seem to think it was always this...
Roads. Once part of a backward, undeveloped pocket of northeastern France, Strasbourg today has the Continent at its doorstep. Some 230 trains pass through the town daily, and there are 5,000 miles of quality roads in the immediate area, including German autobahns and Swiss autoroutes that put Frankfurt and Basel only two hours away. (Ironically, it is easier for an Alsatian to travel out of France than to his own capital: Paris is 200 miles and a five-hour drive away, on a treacherous, obsolete two-lane highway.) The handsome new Entzheim Airport, with runways big enough to handle...