In 2010, the Moselle General Council published on its Facebook page a slew of local expressions under the slogan “You know you’re Moselle when…”. The funny ladies at the Thionville Tourist Office got the idea, the idea germinating, the brain bubbling.
Manuela CAPANNA, director, confesses: “We’re proud of our local platt, it’s everywhere. Who hasn’t heard the bakery talk about schnecks? Or rather, who has ever ordered a raisin loaf? The idea was obvious, this talk is our everyday life”.
Paper and pencil in hand, all the customary expressions were listed. Then it was time to decide, choose and organise. The Tourist Office preferred to put itself in the shoes of a local and use “I”. The idea was not to write a story in Platt as it is still learned today, but to stick to reality. A word here, an expression there, and the spiral took shape.
It reads:
“I eat schnecks, spritz and knepps, so I have speck. I drink schlucks of schnapps and smoke schmers. Oyéééé, shut your schness. I put on my schlapps and lock the door. My katz schmeck and the spatz sing. I chat to my mates unless they’re narreux. And you, ça geht’s?”
It’s as if the whole thing was thrown together with pride. The weather is (relatively) not always the best, we don’t have the sea or the Grand Canyon, but our culture is terribly rich. Beyond the Platt, it’s a question of proudly displaying our gastronomy and our terroir, our heritage and our past.
In East Moselle, the Forbach and Sarreguemines Tourist Offices had drawn the same conclusions and had already embarked on promoting Platt as a by-product. That’s all it took for the Thionville Tourist Office to officially launch the Platt Boutique.
A T-shirt, to start with, to take the temperature and see how it would be received by the public. For the purists, a little regret perhaps that the beloved dialect is mixed in sentences with a very French turn of phrase. But for the average person, the thionvillois like you and me, it was a resounding success. 100 T-shirts sold (the entire stock) in just a few days, to great laughter. We liked the idea. So we had to develop it, turn it into something and meet the visible demand. A few years later, the product range continues to expand. The “J’ai froid la Schness” hat, the “Je bois un Schluck” mug, the “Raoudi à schmutzer” bodysuit, the “C’est pas du speck” T-shirts, Madame Quetsche and other models are shipped to the four corners of the world.
