30 years ago I finished school and joined the military and got trained to hate and fight the evil countries behind the iron curtain that divided Europe in to two hostile blocks.
20 years ago, I started to study at the university. I had matured and learned that there are more colours than black and white and had even been on a visit to the former Czechoslovakia, behind that everlasting iron curtain. Then suddenly one morning in November 1989, I woke up to the radio and the news that the people from both sides of the Berlin wall were celebrating and that East German people was visiting West Berlin.
I couldn’t believe what I heard, what we’d believed as the truth and as solid and unchangeable, had suddenly changed and nothing would be the same ever again.
10 years ago I moved my self and the most of my stuff to Dresden in Germany, in the former “enemy” part of Germany, behind the iron curtain, and which should turn out to be my home for more than 8 years, and now I really got to know the former east block countries as they were the new neighbors and I spend nearly every holiday I had, driving around exploring these places. East became the new West and I even matured more as I became less Danish and more European.
Now it is 2009 and China turns 60 and I’m living in Hong Kong and went to my first real trip into this new neighboring country of mine this summer.
Suddenly I realize that I’ve spend a fourth of my life in those countries, I got told to hate and fight, and here is the next one coming up; China.
So where will I be in 10 years time?
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