Old habits will die hard in Europe's border country
Patti Mesa's hot apple doughnuts were selling well in the freezing cold at Maastricht's old Main Square yesterday lunchtime and she was handling her euro change with impressive ease. Twenty years of living in the picturesque Dutch town where the famous EU Treaty was signed in 1991 have done...
Patti Mesa's hot apple doughnuts were selling well in the freezing cold at Maastricht's old Main Square yesterday lunchtime and she was handling her euro change with impressive ease.
Twenty years of living in the picturesque Dutch town where the famous EU Treaty was signed in 1991 have done nothing to soften her distinctive Spanish accent, but the arrival of the single currency has quickly provoked thoughts about the links between money, identity - and the future.
"I certainly feel Spanish when I am at home in Tenerife," Miss Mesa said, looking tired and perhaps a tad hung over after Monday night's festive euro-bash as she sprinkled sugar over a batch of steaming waffles. "But when I am here I feel more European."
With millions across the continent starting to adjust to the novelty of life without guilders, marks or pesetas, old assumption about national allegiance may eventually be challenged and a new sense of Europeanness forged. But a brief Guardian straw poll in the chilly borderlands of the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium yesterday suggested old habits may die hard.
Mark Hollands, a 36-year-old engineer, biking through Maastricht's cobbled streets to buy currant cakes from Miss Mesa's booth, was "amazed" by the change over to the euro but quite certain that his own identity was not under threat. "I will still feel Dutch. We have a queen and the Germans do not. And I won't feel any more European. For me it is really just a matter of convenience."
In the Pothuiske cafe, on the banks of the icy Maas, near where John Major, François Mitterand and Helmut Kohl did summit battle a decade ago, pony-tailed waiter Walter Van Der Heijden felt that the town - in a finger of the Netherlands separating Belgium from Germany - would now become even more of a crossroads.
But his own relaxed sense of identity would not change. "I'm not chauvinistic," he insisted. "But I am definitely not going to feel less Dutch because of the euro."
Just half an hour's drive away, in the German city of Aachen, national identity deemed equally intact as citizens formed orderly queues in the Spaarkasse Bank to change their marks into euros or withdraw their first bank notes at the cashpoint on the street outside.
"I still feel very German," said Mario Melcher, 27, who works in a children's home. "But that is not because of money. After all, that is just something you pay with. Here the borders are still very much felt because of the second world war. Germany and the Netherlands can never become one."
Biologist Christina Stolz struck a different note. "Personally, I feel quite European already. But I do think having the same money will have an effect and it will certainly make life easier on holiday."
Back in Maastricht, Mark Holland's two-year-old daughter has never even heard of the Dutch guilder, he said - underlining the hopeful point of Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, that today's children will only ever know one currency.
Yet europhoria does not seem set to sweep all before it for modern Europeans, concerned not by the visions of the founding fathers of integration and the high flown rhetoric of their leaders, but by ordinary practical benefits.
"It will be a very good thing on holiday," said Steve Troeuer, a Flemish-speaking Belgian builder, withdrawing his first euros from a cash dispenser in Riemst, a non-descript village five miles from the Dutch border. "But I don't feel European. I feel Belgian."
It is hard to avoid the question of whether Britons will follow where 300m other Europeans have boldly gone. Oliver Parker from Surrey, who helped Maastricht celebrate the new year and the euro by playing in an Abba tribute band, is one early euro convert.
"It is quite good because when you get back from abroad you won't be stuck with all those useless foreign coins any more," he said. "It seems to make a lot of sense."
Twenty years of living in the picturesque Dutch town where the famous EU Treaty was signed in 1991 have done nothing to soften her distinctive Spanish accent, but the arrival of the single currency has quickly provoked thoughts about the links between money, identity - and the future.
"I certainly feel Spanish when I am at home in Tenerife," Miss Mesa said, looking tired and perhaps a tad hung over after Monday night's festive euro-bash as she sprinkled sugar over a batch of steaming waffles. "But when I am here I feel more European."
With millions across the continent starting to adjust to the novelty of life without guilders, marks or pesetas, old assumption about national allegiance may eventually be challenged and a new sense of Europeanness forged. But a brief Guardian straw poll in the chilly borderlands of the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium yesterday suggested old habits may die hard.
Mark Hollands, a 36-year-old engineer, biking through Maastricht's cobbled streets to buy currant cakes from Miss Mesa's booth, was "amazed" by the change over to the euro but quite certain that his own identity was not under threat. "I will still feel Dutch. We have a queen and the Germans do not. And I won't feel any more European. For me it is really just a matter of convenience."
In the Pothuiske cafe, on the banks of the icy Maas, near where John Major, François Mitterand and Helmut Kohl did summit battle a decade ago, pony-tailed waiter Walter Van Der Heijden felt that the town - in a finger of the Netherlands separating Belgium from Germany - would now become even more of a crossroads.
But his own relaxed sense of identity would not change. "I'm not chauvinistic," he insisted. "But I am definitely not going to feel less Dutch because of the euro."
Just half an hour's drive away, in the German city of Aachen, national identity deemed equally intact as citizens formed orderly queues in the Spaarkasse Bank to change their marks into euros or withdraw their first bank notes at the cashpoint on the street outside.
"I still feel very German," said Mario Melcher, 27, who works in a children's home. "But that is not because of money. After all, that is just something you pay with. Here the borders are still very much felt because of the second world war. Germany and the Netherlands can never become one."
Biologist Christina Stolz struck a different note. "Personally, I feel quite European already. But I do think having the same money will have an effect and it will certainly make life easier on holiday."
Back in Maastricht, Mark Holland's two-year-old daughter has never even heard of the Dutch guilder, he said - underlining the hopeful point of Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, that today's children will only ever know one currency.
Yet europhoria does not seem set to sweep all before it for modern Europeans, concerned not by the visions of the founding fathers of integration and the high flown rhetoric of their leaders, but by ordinary practical benefits.
"It will be a very good thing on holiday," said Steve Troeuer, a Flemish-speaking Belgian builder, withdrawing his first euros from a cash dispenser in Riemst, a non-descript village five miles from the Dutch border. "But I don't feel European. I feel Belgian."
It is hard to avoid the question of whether Britons will follow where 300m other Europeans have boldly gone. Oliver Parker from Surrey, who helped Maastricht celebrate the new year and the euro by playing in an Abba tribute band, is one early euro convert.
"It is quite good because when you get back from abroad you won't be stuck with all those useless foreign coins any more," he said. "It seems to make a lot of sense."
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