It is pretty hard to find internet in rural Germany, so it has taken me a while to post this. I was walking along the R1 bicycle route, which goes from Riga on the Baltic Sea all the way to Antwerp on the North Sea. I had not seen anyone for hours, just myself, the forest, the birds, and the last few chapters of Catch 22. I saw some buildings off the path, and I proceeded to unshoulder my pack and looked at the buildings. It was a former Russian Army base, with colossal tank garages and decrepit barrack buildings. What drew my eye was a bit of cyrillic graffitti. The words were crudely scratched into the whitewash. I could not read any of it, but it ended with a cryptic, large 1990. The year the
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