Hello and guten tag!
It is June 2022,
and I’m on a French-speaking train,
but I’m about to arrive in the German-speaking region of Belgium.
Yes, it may be small, but it does exist!
And this is its capital city of Eupen.
(Or as the train calls it, "Eupen" [French Pronunciation].)
And from here, we’re hopping straight on a bus,
to go up into the hills of the High Fens
and climb the highest mountain in Belgium.
But while we're doing that,
why did this tiny bit of the country end up speaking German?
And how did Belgium’s highest mountain suddenly move 3km southeast in 1919?
This is the story of the mighty Signal de Botrange.
(Aside) Doesn’t sound very German!
Today we’re taking on the highest mountain of the three Benelux countries.
I’ve already climbed the highest point in the Netherlands
and the highest point in Luxembourg,
and this is the biggest of the lot.
But in theory it’s the easiest one to climb.
The bus that I’m on normally takes you right to the top of the mountain.
But of course the day that I come here,
the road up to the summit is completely blocked by road works
and the buses are on diversion.
So we are going to have a bit of a hike.
But today’s first challenge is to negotiate an alternative stopping point
with a German-speaking bus driver.
I’ll be honest – this isn’t totally going to plan at the moment.
The bus was about 15 minutes late,
and there’s all sorts of roadworks at the junction up to the Botrange.
So…
I don’t know quite how I’m going to get there.
I’m walking along the other road,
and I’m hoping to sort of curve off at some point.
This looks promising…
So why was that Belgian bus driver speaking German?
Well, historically, the city of Eupen and the region around it
(called Eupen-Malmedy)
used to be in Germany, right up until World War One.
But at the end of World War One,
the Treaty of Versailles famously forced Germany
to give back all the territories it had gained during the war,
and in the middle of that,
somehow, Belgium managed to claim Eupen-Malmedy
even though it had never been part of Belgium before.
Long story short 60,000 Germans woke up one morning in 1919
to find that they were suddenly Belgian.
And not all of them were happy about it.
We’ll come back to them in a bit,
but they weren’t the only victims of sudden Belgium syndrome.
This is the same bit of history that created
that Vennbahn border you may have heard about on YouTube.
But more importantly for this video,
it also meant that Belgium’s highest mountain no longer was.
Until then the 674m Baraque Michel had claimed the title,
but the new territory included the 694m Signal de Botrange,
and so the highest point of Belgium moved 3km southeast.
Erm… so you’re probably expecting me to be doing some climbing today.
Erm.
It’s pretty flat.
The problem is, although the summit is at 694m,
pretty much everything else around here is already at 693m…
So this is it - the final ascent to the summit!
But while we complete our gruelling climb,
how did Belgium get away with just blagging a small piece of Germany?
Well it’s a classic case of political shenanigans.
The annexation of Eupen-Malmedy was formalised in 1920
with what wikipedia describes as a "controversial referendum",
and immediately several political groups sprang up
protesting against Belgian sovereignty
and demanding a return to Germany.
In the 1930s the situation reached boiling point
as the protest movement gained more and more momentum,
and although support for returning to Germany
had dropped quite dramatically among the more left-wing locals,
by 1936, a pro-German and openly pro-Nazi party
had gained a majority in all three districts of Eupen-Malmedy.
And as it happens, they got their wish!
When Hitler invaded Belgium in 1940,
they welcomed his troops here with open arms.
(And open bar, apparently.)
Finally, Eupen-Malmedy was together with Germany again.
But for reasons you may be aware of, that relationship turned sour pretty quickly.
When Hitler decided to take on the Soviet Union a year later,
8000 local men were conscripted and sent to the Eastern Front
and 2000 of them never came back.
You know the rest of the story;
in 1945, Belgium reclaimed Eupen-Malmedy,
and this time the locals didn’t really complain about it.
It is great to be out in the countryside again...
the wind in the trees…
the birds in the air…
the beeping of the excavators…
BEEP BEEP BEEP
...if you can hear me over the construction work:
because the mountain is 694m high,
they built this 6m tower just to get it up to 700m.
And there we are.
What a beautiful view!
BEEP BEEP BEEP
I think we might actually have a view up here (!)
So there we are, the Signal de Botrange, the highest mountain in Belgium!
Which leaves one question.
If this used to be part of Germany…
why does it have a French name?
Well, just to make things even more confusing,
the Malmedy bit of Eupen-Malmedy has always spoken French
- even when it was part of Germany -
because before that it used to be part of France.
And that’s how a small piece of France ended up in Germany
and then joined with two other bits of Germany and became part of Belgium
before briefly returning to Germany
but is now very much Belgian
but they still speak German
except for this bit which as I previously mentioned speaks French.
As usual, I hope I’ve cleared everything up.
If you’d like to climb the highest mountain in Belgium,
there is a car park literally on the summit,
a bus stop with connections to Eupen, Verviers, and Sankt Vith,
and the roadworks should be done by August.
As mountain tops go it’s extremely accessible,
the paths are pretty good and it’s all very flat up here.
Unfortunately that does mean there’s not much of a view,
but there is a small gift shop,
a restaurant that’s open at weekends,
and ski hire in winter.
I hope you like cross country because good luck finding a slope anywhere near here.
And as always, thank you all for watching,
and I will see you soon.