Let's here it for the Berlin Wall. Remember the Berlin Wall? "Ich bin ein jelly doughnut," as J.F.K. so nobly declared (a Berliner is a jelly doughnut in Germany--and yes, it's a tired, old joke). Or, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" as Ronnie requested, and, when Communism had finally rotted away enough from inside, they had no choice but to to comply.
My son Eli and I helped in the tearing down part and here are the pix to prove it. That's what I looked like twenty years ago and he looks a bit different now, too. In any event, we were driving to Copenhagen for the weekend when the wall fell but we got to Berlin six months later and filled up seven shopping bags with the vile, asbestos-impregnated (we were later told) cement. It was hard stuff, truth be known. Reinforced somehow to make it nearly impervious to the hammer and stone chisel, tools we brought along for the purpose. We hacked and smashed at it for hours using a variety of techniques, and while we were at it, East German guards watched us through the widening cracks. It was all very exciting at the time and I still have a small basket of the stuff on a bookshelf in my study.
What does it all mean today? Germany has been successfully reunited, and Communism, except in small, fanatical enclaves here and there around the world, has disappeared as a viable form of controlling large groups of people (I don't count Red China. They saw the light and eagerly embraced Capitalism, became very good at it (better then us?) and are now just plain Fascists).
The downside to winning the Cold War? It would seem that humanity needs it's desperate battles in order to feel fulfilled and it didn't take long, after the collapse of the Evil Empire, for it to come up with something new and just as terrifying as atomic Armageddon. The Soviet Communist bosses, for all their posturing and shoe banging and huge nuclear arsenal, never managed to even blow up a 7-Eleven. But, it only took a few years for a small gang of Muslim fanatics to score a much bigger point and leave us all lying awake at night sweating through our sheets. It's because, unlike the Communists, the Islamists don't want to rule us--they want to kill us--all of us. Apparently we need our nightmares.
VERY HARD TO BELIEFE JUST HOW SMALL THIS WORLD IS. TOMORROW I WILL TAKE POSSESSION OF MY NEW BOAT: ALBERG 30 SEAWIND.
ReplyDeleteBEING BORED A BIT I JUST SEARCHED FOR HER NAME ON THE NET AND STUMBLED UPON THIS BLOG.
GUESS WHAT: I AM ALSO FROM EAST GERMANY. I ESCAPED FROM THERE IN THE FALL OF 1988 VIA THE GERMAN EMBASSY IN HUNGARY....LESS THAN A YEAR BEFORE THE MASS EXODUS.
CURRENTLY I AM LIVING ON A PRIVATE ISLAND IN THE KEYS. BUT I WILL BE MOVING ON THE BOAT WITHIN A YEAR FULLTIME AND START CRUISING THE CARRIBIAN. JUST BECAUSE I CAN AND IT KEEPS ME AWAY FROM GERMANY. HAVE NOT BEEN BACK HOME FOR 19 YEARS AND WOULD HATE TO GO THERE.
Hello and thanks for the comment. I assume you bought Seawind from Gavin, the guy I sold it to last year. She is a fine boat and I wish you well voyaging the Caribbean. I've done some of that too, from Dominique to Granada. To read more about my sailing/traveling, you can go to my website, douglasarvidson.com or to The Prague Revue, an online literary magazine I have been writing for three years. As regards Germany, we lived there for 12 years, in Hanau, near Frankfurt. Again, I wish you fair winds and following seas.
Delete