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April 06, 2003

Where have I been?

Stephen's been visiting this week, and the prior week was the anonymity conference. I've been a little out of the loop. My apartment is a mess because I cook and sleep but don't clean.

We've had as fun a few days as people can have when I have the flu and am not much of a tour guide of Germany anyway.

We went to Leipzig, to the Stasi Museum and to the St. Thomaskirche.

Bachs-Tomb.jpg
Bach's Tomb, inside the Thomaskirche

We also went outside of town to the Dresden Pillnitz castle with Ferri. Not much of it was opened, though, because of flood damage.

Ferri-Stephen-Flood.jpg
Flood levels through the years

The flood table written on the pillars and walls doesn't even have last years marked yet. Last year's was higher than any of the others (evidence by a brown stain just below the ceiling, slightly above the last mark recorded in 1858 or so).

We went out for a Fraternity dinner at Ferri's, where I met a character that I didn't get to talk to long enough.

"I am an old man," he says to me, "I was born in 1917. 85 years. I lived through the war. I served in it. I did not want to, most of us did not, but I did." I was suddenly presented with the rare opportunity to talk to a former Nazi soldier who seems willing, in fact eager to talk about his experience. I couldn't think of anything to say. I guess I was worried that I would offend him or the people around, asking probing questions about life under Hitler's rule. Maybe I will try to find out his name and talk to him later. Maybe not. Some things are better left overwritten by dry history. Maybe we shouldn't ask these old soldiers to tell us their story. The nazis were evil and lost the war; so long as we remember that, why remember their names and recall the things they did as individuals?

Anyway, what was meant to be a status update turned into a psuedo-historopolitical rant.

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