"Getting tested every two days to go to work, frankly, that swells me!"
"Gets carried away without ambiguity, Corinne, at a standstill in the queue of the Covid-19 screening station installed where the Bremen d'Or border post was once, separating the town of Spicheren (Moselle) in France to that of Saarbrücken in Germany.
She is one of 16,000 people from Lorraine working across the Rhine.
Corinne is exasperated.
The same morning she signed a petition circulating on social networks "to put an end to this masquerade".
In the far east of the Moselle, where the closure of coal mines is a not so distant memory, Franco-German culture remains second nature.
"It's in our DNA", confirms Corina, of German father, French mother and holder of dual nationality.
To be hampered in this way in her daily life is for her "a big step backwards".
“This screening measure is a disguised border closure,” she says.
Mother of three children, who speak and think in both languages, she pleads against “the Saar, which could not resist the Berlin directive.
It was enough to appeal to the responsibility of the people ”.
Reluctantly, Corina sacrifices like all border workers to the ritual that sets in.
The Bremen Gold Screening Center was hastily set up.
“Monday, for the installation, it was panic.
But today, things are already better, ”tempers Frank Grethel, responsible for the drive version screening test system set up by the German authorities, faithful to their reputation as an organizing power.
1600 tests in two days, all negative
In two days, 1,600 tests were carried out there.
All are negative.
David and Loïc do not yet have the verdict.
They brandishing a sheet bearing their civil status and struck with a QR Code.
The latter will tell them in half an hour, via their cell phone, if they are negative or positive.
Both work in France.
"Me it was to go shopping, but frankly I had pain with their cotton swab in the nose, I'm not about to do it anytime soon," says David, scalded.
This Wednesday at the end of the morning, Lucien, team leader in a metallurgical plant in Saarbrücken, is still at his workplace.
On his return around 4 pm, his first gesture will be to go to the pharmacy in his town "400 m from the border".
He will then know whether or not he will be able to go to work the next day.
His wife has given up shopping in Grande-Rosselle, the German counterpart of Petite-Rosselle, a French town where the couple live.
She has always gone there by car, bicycle and sometimes even on foot.
But the obligation of the test got the better of his lifestyle.
"Germany is work, but also private life, friends, activities ... and this intimacy has taken a serious blow", regrets Lucien.
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The German authorities are aware of the sensitivity of the subject.
The police have pledged not to carry out specific border controls.
But in the event of a routine check, you will have to be negative for Covid-19 ... and be able to prove it.
