... and other pointless Solidarity puns Everyone, even the locals here that I've met, wants to know how on earth I came to be traveling to these places where American tourists just aren't common. I tell them this story: growing up in the 1970s and 80s, in a world dominated by the Cold War and threat of nuclear annihilation, the thing for an idealistic young liberal to do was to work for peace and understanding with the people of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc. I was a poor kid, so travel wasn't an option, but my high school (utterly improbably) offered me the opportunity to study Russian language, which in 1988 I jumped at. I wanted to change the world. Unfortunately for me, the world wasn't waiting - and in 1989 it went and
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