A Story of a Stone

About 20 meters from my mother in law's front door is the entrance to a path through a forest. About 10 m down that path is, or was, a marker stone. On one side it said "H. Braunschweig" (Duchy of Brunswick) and the other "K Hannover" (Kingdom of Hanover) and bore a date in the 1850s or 60s -- before the German Empire. It delimited yet another german border that no longer exists.

I was more amazed that anyone had bothered to put such a marker in such a tiny village than I was surprised that it survived. It was not on the path and heavily overgrown; I only stumbled across it because my kid liked to wander around. I think everybody knew it was there but nobody really cared.

Anyway, the point: about 10 years or so ago some worthies decided to clean up the hiking path, put up some signs, and pull up the stone, putting it where everyone could see it next to a sign with the name of the village. Since the border no longer exists it doesn't matter that the marker is a few meters from its former location, but what really did annoy me is that they changed its orientation!