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Published: December 31st 2011
I am publishing this blog on the 20th anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union, which is also 20 years after the events in this blog took place.
This blog, falling on the last day of 2011, coincidentally also completes my effort to blog every trip I have taken since 1949. I originally wrote these blogs for my family and friends. However, it turns out that most of my readers are fellow travel bloggers, so these blogs are for you too.
Working at NATO Headquarters from 1984 to 1995 gave me a front row seat to history; namely the end of the Cold War. I lived through the Reagan buildup, where in our case the NATO Infrastructure Program budget was tripled, thereby allowing NATO to build facilities to withstand anything the Warsaw Pact could throw at us.
I saw the initial skirmishes on the Global War on Terror, first with the Baader Meinhof gang and other European groups, when they exploded bombs outside of the headquarters building where I worked in Ramstein, and outside our support activity in Brussels.
I also remember the day in 1986 that President Reagan decided to bomb Quadaffi's tent
after he attacked Americans at a nightclub Berlin and by downing Pan Am Flight 107. I walked into the committee room unaware of what had happened and everyone slapped me on the back, congratulating me and the U.S. for what we had done even though some of their governments refused to give overflight rights requiring our jets from bases in England to fly all around Europe and across north Africa to get to Libya.
I saw the inital thaw in Soviet-NATO relations under President Gorbachev, and visits to NATO by Presidents Reagan and Bush (41), and Vice President Gore.
I vividly remember 9 November 1989 as students and other demonstrators took hammers and crow bars to tear down the Berlin Wall. I remember having coffee shortly after with my German colleague who asked me whether the U.S. would allow Germany to reunify. I responed on a personal basis that German was one nation. He would later give me a chip from the Wall which sits on my desk. I also remember the concerns of my colleagues from the smaller NATO nations that the U.S. would leave NATO and let Germany reemerge as the strongest European power. I will
let the last twenty years speak for themselves.
I remember the Gulf War of 1991. Our facilities, including the school and clinic were surrounded by concertina wire and all windows were taped to prevent glass splinters from injuring anyone. Our facilities were guarded by Army reserve troops with M-16s. Armed troops even escorted our kids on the school buses.
And I remember NATO slowly adapting to a post Cold War role, with its first "out of area" mission in Yugoslavia. At first, NATO's role was limited to enforcing a no fly zone over the country, with the EU taking the lead on the ground. We shot down a few planes and helicopter that were stupid enough to fly. Why fly when you have total control of the ground and can do anything you please to those who want to be free.
In July 1995 Serbs committed genocide in Srebrenice, Bosnia, where over 8000 mostly men and boys were slaughtered without EU "peacekeepers" lifting a finger. I don't blame these troops; only their political masters who gave them an impossible task. As a result of this horror, a month later NATO's role was expanded to include "peace
making", defined
as bombing Serbia into the Stone Age (although somehow the Chinese Embassy was mis-targeted). I was the Mission Duty Officer the week we started the bombing war. It was my job to respond to NATO Situation Center calls each night to determine whether the messages were urgent enough to awake our Ambassador. I had to go into NATO headquarters multiple times every night to read the messages. I didn't get much sleep that week.
It was in this context that we decided to take our summer vacation in Central Europe, to see first hand the changes that were happening. Little did we know that during our vacation, the Soviet Union would finally collapse.
10 August 1991 Saturday. We drove to Berlin, crossing the former inner German border at the same place as we had in 1980. This time there were no Soviet or East German border guards, and no barbed wire fences, watch towers, or mine fields...already an improvement! However, the autobahn was still in bad shape, but at least no one was keeping track of how long it took for us to drive to Berlin. We checked into a gasthaus on a lake in the
Grunewald district, and had dinner there. We then walked around the attractive grounds before turning in for the night.
11 August 1991 Sunday. Whereas Linda and I had seen most of West Berlin in 1980, and whereas the purpose of this trip was to see developments in former East Berlin and Germany, we started at the epicenter: the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate, the site of President Reagan's 1987 defining moment "President Gorbachev, tear down this wall" speech, which along with the Solidarity movement encouraged by Pope John Paul II in Poland, Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia who led the Velvet Revolution and who said "As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it", and other freedom movements in Central Europe, had started the whole ball rolling.
But Reagan's role in ending the Cold War was not considered worthy of even a shared Nobel Peace Prize by the highly liberal and still mostly ignorant Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Oslo, and for which as a Norwegian descendent I am
highly apologetic. In my eyes they will only redeem themselved when the take the Peace Prize away from Gore and the IPPC, in light of the Climategate emails, and President Obama, where I hope they have learned their lesson not to award prizes in anticipation of some future peaceful act.
Anyway, such injustices aside, we proceeded through the Brandenburg Gate and down the Unter Den Lindenstrasse to the Pergamon Museum. We spent most of the day there enthralled with the artifacts, and whole buildings, from the ancient civilizations of Troy, Sumeria, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia. We walked beside the same walls and through the same gates as Queen Esther, Daniel, and Nehemiah during their exile from the Promised Land.
We then returned to our car and drove around some neighborhoods. While the tourist area of former East Berlin had been maintained during the Cold War, as a Potemkin facade for the West to see, the rest of the city was let go, with the buildings still in decrepit condition. It was obvious that reunification of Germany, both socially and economically, was going to cost a lot.
12 August 1991 Monday. Our next stop on our Central European tour was Dresden, about a two hour drive south of Berlin. Before we left Berlin, however, we needed to fill up our gas tank and a gas container with unleaded gas, as we wouldn't be able to buy unleaded gas until we got to Austria.
Upon arrival in Dresden we checked into our hotel, and had lunch near the Grosser Garten. We then walked around the historic center of town. Many of the major Baroque churches and the Frauenkirche Cathedral still showed damage from WWII. During the war, Dresden had been firebombed, one of the more controversial targets as over a hundred thousand civilians were killed. Of course, London and other major cities had been fire bombed first by the Nazis; and as Civil War General Sherman observed on his March through Atlanta, which he put to the torch, "War is Hell." It is, however, sad to see the consequnces of war, and hopefull mankind will learn that it is better to dominate the world economically than through war...or is that the right lesson?
13 August 1991 Tuesday. Our next stop was another short drive away: Prague, the capital of the new Czech Republic. Linda and I had been here over Thanksgiving weekend in 1978, and it was cold and dreary at the time. Prague had not suffered destruction during WWII, but the Cold War resulted in deterioration of the Baroque buildings due to lack of maintenance.
This time, even though the Czech people had only been free a couple of years, buildings were painted and restoration was underway. The city sparkled with vitality. We took the standard tourist tour starting with the Old City Hall and its Astronomical Clock; then across the St Charles Bridge and up cobblestone steets to St Vitus Cathedral. We took our time; stopping for lunch, window shopping, and buying some local crafts. Seeing Prague again was a pleasant experience.
14 August 1991 Wednesday. Our onward journey to Bratislava, Slovakia, involved the aforementioned detour for gas in Austria. With a tank full enough to get us to Bratislava and Budapest and back to Austria, we continued on our way.
Our original intention was to visit the area in eastern Slovakia from where Linda's mom's parents had immigrated to the U.S. in 1918. However, even with our extra gas container, we wouldn't have enough gas to go that far and back. So we settled on Bratislava. This city is no tourist mecca. Our hotel was Stalinist. The only restaurant we could find seemed to be on rations, and the food was terrible. We wanted to buy some local crafts, but the only store that sold crafts was state owned and only had a few items on the shelves. Needless to say, there was no effort to turn from its old communist ways to the "joys of capitalism."
15 August 1991 Thursday. It was another two hour drive to Budapest. As we entered Hungary we could already notice the difference. Even along the highways there were local entrepreneurs selling goods. Hungary had always been the country more inclined to tug against the Soviet yoke. They had been invade by Soviet troops in 1956 and 1968 (while I was on a Eurailpass tour of the continent) to bring them in line. The 1968 invasion still took the Soviet army over a month to achieve their objectives, even though they were unopposed. Too bad it took the Soviets and NATO from 1968 to 1991 to realize that the Warsaw Pact was not much of a threat, and it was time to bring this whole experiment in the goodness of man, whereby everyone would be rewarded equally without regard to their efforts, to a screetching halt.
We checked into the Novotel near the Kiralyi Palota (Royal Palace), built on a hill on the west side of the Danuabe river, at the original location where in the 13th century the kings of Hungary had their residence. It was a beautiful location looking out over the city, across the river to the Parliament Building. We had lunch and strolled around that neighborhood for awhile. Shopping was great. The vendors, and the Hugarians in general, love kids and spoiled ours rotten. By mid afternoon, rather than crossing the river to see more of the city, we decided to drive north following the Danube River to Szentendra, to the Open-Air Ethnographic Museum and its art galleries. We had a leisurely drive observing barge traffic on the river and after touring the museum and galleries had a wonderful dinner at a restaurant on the banks of the river. The evening drive back to the hotel was fine. At the hotel the kids used the indoor pool before we went to bed.
16 August 1991 Friday. We returned to Austria. However, there was a long line at the border crossing where we sat for some minutes. Finally, being the impatient person that I am, I decided to see what the delay was. They were filming a movie at the border crossing. I could see that this might take some time so I pulled rank. I showed the police my diplomatic passport, and one of them accompanied me back to my car, where we were pulled out of line and allowed to cross over without any further difficulties. I think that was the only time I used diplomatic priveledges; even paying all parking tickets. However, I don't know how many speeding tickets I may have avoided when police saw my license plate and decided not to pull me over.
Anyway, we were on our way to Vienna. I had been there in 1964 and 1968, and looked forward to visiting again. However, Linda and the kids were not up to seeing another big city. So I took them on a windshield tour, and gave them the historical highlights. But I don't think anyone was paying attention, so we continued to Linz, Austria, another town on the Danube a bit further upstream. We stopped there for no particular reason other that it was time for supper and it looked like a nice place to stop.
17 August 1991 Saturday. We continued on our way west, stopping in Salzburg to see some of the "Sound of Music" sights. We then crossed into Germany, through Berchtesgaden to the Konigsee, and then back into Austria to Erpfendorf where we had learned to ski in 1978. We ate lunch at our old gasthaus, and then continued through St Johann and Kitzbuhl to the autobahn that took us to Innsbruck. Time for another break and ice cream, and then onward to Garmisch and up the hill to Oberammergau. I had reserved an apartment at the NATO School for a week. We missed Steve and Kay and their boys who we spent many delightful weekends with in the early 1980's, but they had returned to the States eight years earlier. But we still returned here whenever we could. Other than the beautiful alpine scenery, and their Passion Play held every ten years, the highlight of Oberammergau was their indoor/outdoor community pool with water slides and everything kids love.
18 - 23 August 1991 Sunday through Friday. Life revolved around the pool. Meanwhile, outside of our little community, the world was turning upside down. The hardliners in the Soviet government were finally fed up with President Gorbachev's glasnost and peristroika policies, and decided to stage a coup. They held Gorbachev hostage in his dacha in Crimea, and told the world that he was sick. They were taking over the government in his absence. Their plan started to fall apart when Gorbachev refused to resign. I guess shooting the deposed leader is out of fashion. Meanwhile, Soviet troops and tanks approached the white Parliament Building in Moscow to take over. Yeltsin rallied the reformers and students and mounted a tank calling on the troops to preserve the reform movement. The troops switched sides, the hardliners surrendered, Gorbachev returned for a brief period, and Yeltsin declared the end of the Soviet Union as of 31 December 1991. And the rest is history.
Of course my nose was in the newspaper all week, so I don't think we strayed far from the pool or Oberammergau.
24 August 1991 Saturday. We drove home to Overijse via our old homes in Boblingen, Ramstein and Glan Munchweiler. We wanted to show the kids where we lived before. We didn't see our neighbors, who eleven years later were prabably no longer around.
Note: Until I can find my pictures for this trip I am including some that I took on previous visits to Berlin, Prague, Vienna, and Oberammergau.
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Congratulations Bob....
..on compiling and finally completing what can only be termed as the 'Mother of all Blogs' :) It's going to take me at least another year to catch up with mine as I still have photos languishing in Sweden and the UK, which I must try to retrieve in the near future. Do you have any future trips planned?