When you look at Frans Mertens you just see an old man with a normal past and a normal life, but nothing is what it seems.
Frans was born in 1920 in a normal family in Diest, close to Limburg, Belgium.
His parents both had a bar in the centre of Diest called ‘The house of the rising sun’, where he always had to work many hours to get a silly gratuity from drunk people.
At the age of 12 he went to study economics at boarding school in Leuven.
‘Boarding school is very pleasant actually, we always had to eat at a big table with all the people of my class and once we were all tired of eating the same old crap every day, so I jelled really loud ‘FOOD FIGHT!!’ and everybody stood up and start throwing their food around. It was so amusing to see all the fathers at the side of the refectory and they didn’t know what to do. Afterwards I was punished for jelling that and I had to clean the whole refectory, but I had the time of my life. When I think of the faces of the fathers... ow boy.’
After his studies he was a professional book-keeper and his quest to find a job started on that sunny day in 1939. After looking for a job (what he didn’t get) he picked up an old passion, playing the piano. Because he was such a natural talent, he immediately got a job in a local bar. But then there was the war, Adolf Hitler’s troupes invaded Belgium and our friend Frans immediately felt the pressure to join the resistance. First he was a normal soldier, but when all the boys of his force were hearing him play the piano they didn’t want him to die, because they wanted him to play more when the war was over. So Frans joined a secret agency where he had to be a spy. His job was very simple, he had to play the piano in German bars and just listen to what the soldiers were telling. He did this job for 3 years, but then he began to find it boring, he had to find a new quest. Frans wanted to bake fries for the local villagers.
But then something historical happend, Hilter came to Belgium for a secret meeting in a restaurant and the resistance needed a pianoplayer to spy on our moustached friend and guess who they asked to do that job, yes, it was Frans. ‘Hitler was not a tall man, I actually find him very amusing. He is just a small little guy with a stupid moustache and he ruled the world for a moment.’
In that meeting Hitler told some vital information and Frans told it to the resistance. This was Hitler’s last command he would ever give, because all the armies knew what Hitler was up to.
The war was over and was out of job because his fish and chips stand was burned down. So he had to search a new job, finally he found something as a book-keeper and he did this job for the rest of his life.
Frans thinks that nowadays everything goes by so fast and everything has to go really fast. In his days he had to walk miles to have some ice cubes for his parents bar. Now you have a machine to cool your drinks cool, everything is so easy nowadays and people are becoming lazier and lazier by day.
When you want to visit Frans you have to go to Scherpenheuvel where he now lives in a residence.

When I asked Frans about his view on the future he simply said: “It isn’t the future that is important but the past; you have to learn from our mistakes and take everything as it comes.”