1. History of the three borders area My chosen name is "Toog." My family name, "Weinzaepflen," means "little wine cork." It's not exactly German; it comes from a Swiss-German dialect. My home town, Mulhouse, has been in the last centuries alternately Swiss, German and French. If you walk in the streets of Mulhouse (I couldn't say "do that," it's not a very interesting city), there's still written on the manhole covers "Muhlhausen," and it comes from the German period. The main street, "Rue du Sauvage" (Wild Man Street) was renamed during WW2, "Adolph Hitler Strasse." When the nazis found out why everyone laughed, they decided to translate the original name in German, "Wilde Mann Strasse." The city's main square was decorated in the early years of the XXth century with a huge statue called "Schweissdissi", ("the man who sweats"). It represents a hard working man wiping the sweat on his forehead with one hand. The statueis naked with a piece of material on the colossal penis. It was placed so that the official people, when they had to do a speech from the city's house balcony, spoke to a monumental ass owned by a 30 foot high bronze giant. The statue continues its hard life in a park, the back of the statue correctly hidden by the trees. My family has a long tradition of architects, on both sides. The first grandfather from my father's side died in 1949 by a heart attack, having to control in the same time the rebuilding of 600 different houses. This explains my father's and my own nonchalance. He was very small and bald very young. In the picture of his wedding with my grandmother in 1931, you can see him placed one stair above his wife so that they appear the same size. I happen to know that he worked before the war with the Liberty's architect, another Alsatian from Colmar, Bartholdi. When I compare my two grandfathers' style, I see many differences, probably due to their education: the grandfather from my mother's side was a Lutheran Protestant, and I see Puritanism in the strictly functional appearance of his buildings. Father's side is a little bit more stylish, with a predilection to a roman approach, like the corners of the houses who try to figure columns; I visited a nice unoccupied venetian pavilion he made, with a lot of decorations, pink marble, messed out, sort of a horror movie ruin in a small forest. >>>