Constance, Germany, and Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, are divided cities these days, with a strip of grass and two fences separating them after the countries closed their borders to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
German Maja Bulic and her Swiss friend Jean-Pierre Walter talk through two fences set up by Swiss and German authorities on the German-Swiss border as a protection measure due to the spread of the coronavirus disease in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland April 5, 2020. Reuters/Arnd Wiegmann
“This is our only chance to stand across from each other, face-to-face,” said Jean-Pierre Walter, a Swiss who drove an hour from Zurich to see his German partner, Maja Bulic. “We can at least speak to each other. That’s something.” This is a coronavirus no-man’s land. It traces the route of a barbed wire-topped barrier that split Switzerland and Germany during World War Two and that was removed long ago.
Currently, those Swiss and Germans with cross-border jobs can go back and forth. For nearly everybody else, it’s forbidden.This week, officials added a second, since people were passing beers, playing cards and kissing through the chain links - hardly the required two-metre separation.Swiss border police, reinforced by the Swiss Army, patrol the Swiss side. An occasional German federal police squad car makes the rounds just opposite.
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