An entire German motorway has recently disappeared. The A862 always claimed a certain place in our hearts. Travelling eastwards from France towards the Rhine crossing north of Basel, it is easy to miss the Franco-German border in the post-Schengen piety. Motorists speed across borders without even noticing them. But, just as the river bridge reached the German bank of the Rhine, there was always the sign that reminded travellers that here, at the border, the road known in France as the A36 became the German A862.
The other Germany
My brief was to take the pulse of eastern Germany on the 21st anniversary of her union (in October 1990) with her bigger neighbour to the west. Thus was a new and larger Germany born. Twenty-first birthdays have symbolic rather than any legal ...
