He cycles from the German side, on his electric bike.Then they sit down on either side of the border, a yard or two apart.
“We’re here because of love,” said Tüchsen Hansen, when I visited them last week. “Love is the best thing in the world.”The couple’s unlikely romance began in Denmark two summers ago, in slightly less sentimental fashion. “Never marry a German,” Rasmussen had often warned them as teenagers — not from xenophobia, but because she wanted them to live close to her home.The match was also surprising for more poignant reasons. Both had been widowed in recent years, after more than six decades of marriage for each, and both thought their days of companionship had ended.
Story continuesIn 2001, that border effectively disappeared again, as Denmark joined a border-free zone within the European Union. But then on March 14, 2020, exactly 100 years after the plebiscite, the border barriers were erected once more.