Jean-Francois: “when I was young, we don’t speak about Germany, we speak about Bosch. The war was still in the mind of my grandfather and grandmother, because they have lived so terrible period, terrible moment. What they have done during the last war.
Now everything have changed, 70 years after the war. But I remember always, and when I made the first exchange in ’72 in Schiedam. I was in my host family, and in this host family we are two from two different countries, one from France, myself, and in the same room slept someone from Germany. And at this period, of course in ’72, no mobile phone, nothing. I phoned sometimes to my family, to my mother, and I said to my mother, “I am in the host family, I am with the German people.
I remember, I have cried. I have cried. I am 16, I am very young. It is my first time outside Vienne, outside France. And I say to my mother, “Mom, can you imagine that I am with a German in the same host family? She said, “But you are in the Netherlands, you are not in Germany. You can imagine in ’72, we are in ’72, and still, and the idea of my grandmother my grandfather and also my mother. You are with German people in a host family from the Netherlands. It is very curious. I said it was the choice of the organization. Then of course this German, who was leader of the group of Esslingen, was fantastic. We connect all together.
Since the year ’72, I’m engaged in a lot of associations. Popular education, like Club Léo Lagrange, which is also a member of the Twinning Committee. It is, in fact, a group of associations and the International Exchange Committee. So I am very, very engaged in this association and I know a lot of people.”
