Berverath

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My name is Britta Kox. I am 47 years old and we are here in Berverath in my beautiful house with a beautiful garden. I was born in Immerath, in the hospital, like almost everyone of my generation. I've always lived here, spent my entire childhood and youth here, but moved away when I was 18. That's how it goes, you get to know someone, you move out, you stay away for a while. In the end, I moved eight times and always returned to Berverath - I moved back four times. The last time was in 2015, when we moved here completely with the children and said: “So, now we’re staying, we want to stay and we’re not taking another step away from here.”

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In that sense it was a conscious step because my parents simply no longer had the strength. My parents no longer had the strength to continue living here; They always lived here and then at some point they said: "Good, now it's Sense. We can't go any further. It's too much for us here. The house is too big for two people." We were looking for something new for our family of six and my father said: "Well, then you move in there and we move away and you keep fighting for us and you take care of it and do the negotiations with RWE, if that's the case. You have more strength than us." And that was the main reason. We then said to ourselves: “Okay, for ten or twelve years, thirteen years in the end, we will still have a nice life in this place where I was born and my children can still experience everything that I experienced here back then.”

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So my connection to this place is easy to explain: we have been there for centuries. My whole family has always lived here. My great-grandmother lived here in this house with fourteen children and rebuilt the house alone after the war and she created a protective roof for us, a home, and that is also one of the reasons why I say this house has soul. So many people from my family have lived here. The house has soul; the whole village has soul. We played here a lot as children. We had gangs here. The upper village and the lower village fought each other, fought playfully. There were treasures that were buried, that were stolen by the other group and yeah, those are just things you don't want to let go of. Every house has some memory. When I walk through the village here, every house is full of memories. As soon as I see this house, I know that I've done this and that, I've managed to get through the farmer's rent and these are things that I don't have in the new place, that I only associate with here. Friends of mine lived in Keyenberg and Immerath, and I also went to school in Immerath. Behind the church in Keyenberg I kissed my husband for the first time. I was there this morning and saw the corner again and it brings back so many memories; Memories that are torn away from you and a lot of memorabilia have already disappeared and I don't want to see any more disappear.

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Yes, it's twofold. Some say, “Okay, I’ve put it behind me.” They say: "Okay, I've come to terms with the new thing," but voices keep coming up, especially from older people, who say: "At the beginning it was like a vacation and at some point you feel like you want to go home again, but home is no longer there." And these are things that I don't want to experience. Every person decides for themselves whether they want to go or stay and every person has their reasons. There are the older people who say: "I don't have the time to wait anymore. I don't have the strength anymore. I'm seventy years old. If I don't build now, when will I? If I don't start again now, when will I? Time is running out. Time is running out of you." Younger people are more likely to have the opportunity to say, “Okay, I’ll wait and see what happens next,” but older people no longer have that option. We have been determined to relocate for forty years. For forty years we have been told: “You have to, you have to, you have to”, and at some point you just can't get out of this cycle. That's just how it is. And experience shows me that there are people who say: "Okay, that's good for us. We're done with it." But there are also people who are very, very sad about it. And some leave. There are people who leave. There have been people in Keyenberg who have negotiated with RWE; They came home and dropped dead because it was just too much of a nervous strain and it's sad that something like that has to happen.

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I can only talk about Berverath here. At the moment it is relatively quiet and relatively peaceful. I haven't had the experience of anyone stopping talking to me yet. On the contrary. But the topic is just not talked about. When you talk about it, it's around it, but it's been that way for ages. And I actually find that sad because I think if we talked to each other, regardless of whether we were against it or for it, if we talked to each other, then we would have a lot more options. Yes, I'll just say now: If one person says: "Yes, okay. I've now had the negotiation behind me and it went like this and this and that expert was good and and and...", you can also exchange this experience with each other, but that's missing. That's totally missing. It's always been that way because people just don't want to say what they got for their house. You have to be silent. You can't even say it. And I actually find that very sad. Otherwise, people still treat each other nicely and experience tells me that when you talk to people who have decided to relocate, the most you get is: "Yes, you have to understand that things are no different for us at the moment. We have decided to do so." And I fully respect that because, as I said, everyone has their own reasons for leaving or staying.