#1
Posted: 5/13/08 at 11:44am
Something has been bothering me lately, and I need to vent, question, whatever...
Some of you may, or may not know that I lived in Germany for 3 years in the then West Germany as a Military Policeman in the US Army. Being in Berlin few weeks ago brought this boiling back to the surface.
We partition Germany into 4 parts after WW2, then we take the French, British, and US part and come up with West Germany, while those delightful Russkies have East Germany.
We have many military bases there, and pump millions into West Germany, and basically because of us, they rise again, become our friend, and we protect them from the threat of the East.
Fast forward to now to 2000, the wall comes down......we are closing bases left and right, which upsets many of us who were there as we know the benefit of those bases to the country and its economy, and for protection of the region.
But.....we're not just closing them, we want to move some of them to Poland or the Czech Republic, which makes NO sense to me.
The Russians are pissed, so a slight threat rises.
Why close established bases (that have been there for over 50 years, and open new ones.....it costs much more to establish a new one.
My former base in Karlsruhe closed in 1995. And when they moved out, they just left all the books in the American Library there.
The local public library was just going to toss them, when American wives of German nationals SCREAMED bloody murder and said no, so the American Library was kept as a branch of the public library and has been a boon to the area.
If Germany as a whole was acclimating well to reunification I might feel differently, but there are still issues.....many of which are East-West issues and the influx of other cultures to the area.
Berlin, on the other hand is a success story, in my opinion.
They are building everywhere. Unter den Linden, the 5th Avenue in the days of the Kaiser (and absolutely nothing during Soviet occupation) as turned around and is once again THE place to walk.
In 1993 I stood in front of a boarded-up Reichstag with nothing around it. It was bleak and ugly.
Today, the Reichstag is redone, re-opened, and the seat of government. There all kinds of wonderful new buildings around it, and the somber memorial to Holocaust victims.
It is again a world capital
I noted no tension there between the Osters (former Easterners) and the former Westerners.....which was refreshing.
I'm upset we close base after base. We need them there (or some of them..there is even talk of closing down Heidelberg), and many Germans want them there (although many do not. I know how I'd feel with a German military base in my valley)
Anyway...I guess it's an end of an era, and one I do not like.
Thank you for letting me vent.
(I realize most of you could care less, and that's ok, I just needed to get this out)
Some of you may, or may not know that I lived in Germany for 3 years in the then West Germany as a Military Policeman in the US Army. Being in Berlin few weeks ago brought this boiling back to the surface.
We partition Germany into 4 parts after WW2, then we take the French, British, and US part and come up with West Germany, while those delightful Russkies have East Germany.
We have many military bases there, and pump millions into West Germany, and basically because of us, they rise again, become our friend, and we protect them from the threat of the East.
Fast forward to now to 2000, the wall comes down......we are closing bases left and right, which upsets many of us who were there as we know the benefit of those bases to the country and its economy, and for protection of the region.
But.....we're not just closing them, we want to move some of them to Poland or the Czech Republic, which makes NO sense to me.
The Russians are pissed, so a slight threat rises.
Why close established bases (that have been there for over 50 years, and open new ones.....it costs much more to establish a new one.
My former base in Karlsruhe closed in 1995. And when they moved out, they just left all the books in the American Library there.
The local public library was just going to toss them, when American wives of German nationals SCREAMED bloody murder and said no, so the American Library was kept as a branch of the public library and has been a boon to the area.
If Germany as a whole was acclimating well to reunification I might feel differently, but there are still issues.....many of which are East-West issues and the influx of other cultures to the area.
Berlin, on the other hand is a success story, in my opinion.
They are building everywhere. Unter den Linden, the 5th Avenue in the days of the Kaiser (and absolutely nothing during Soviet occupation) as turned around and is once again THE place to walk.
In 1993 I stood in front of a boarded-up Reichstag with nothing around it. It was bleak and ugly.
Today, the Reichstag is redone, re-opened, and the seat of government. There all kinds of wonderful new buildings around it, and the somber memorial to Holocaust victims.
It is again a world capital
I noted no tension there between the Osters (former Easterners) and the former Westerners.....which was refreshing.
I'm upset we close base after base. We need them there (or some of them..there is even talk of closing down Heidelberg), and many Germans want them there (although many do not. I know how I'd feel with a German military base in my valley)
Anyway...I guess it's an end of an era, and one I do not like.
Thank you for letting me vent.
(I realize most of you could care less, and that's ok, I just needed to get this out)
It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story...
AGATHA CHRISTIE, Life magazine, May 14, 1956
