A Brief History Class - Part 2
I think it was almost 10 minutes that we were chatting at the river banks.
“Did I bore you off? Do you want me to continue?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“Because of the Treaty of Versailles, our country was weakened. They took away our lands and military because they were afraid we’ll be more powerful than they are. They didn’t want to lose their powers in Europe to us.”
“So there came Hitler. He was a nationalist at that time and he wanted back those lands that were given away by the Treaty or Versailles. So he gathered all his men and said to the Allied Forces; We want our lands back and if you’re not giving them back, we’ll take it!”
“He attacked and invaded Rhineland, Austria, the borders of Czechoslovakia and then Poland.”
Suddenly he stopped and started at me.
“And do you know how World War 2 started in Europe?”
I shook my head.
“It was the 1st of September of 1939 when Hitler attacked Poland. Very soon after that, Poland’s allies declared war on us. Everyone, including the UK, France, Australia, US, New Zealand, Canada and a few more countries.”
“You see, everything they wrote on the papers labeled Hitler as the bad guy. In fact, he’s a nationalist and hero in Germany, you know? He’s just taking back what was taken away from us.”
By now, it was coming to 20 minutes that we were chatting.
“Oh, I can see my friend waiting for me opposite the road. I got to go. I hope you’ve learned something and have a wonderful trip back.”
We shook hands and I thanked him for his brief history class.
This was the second time that someone was talking to me about the history of the place since I was here 2 months ago. The first was in Berchtesgaden where a 80+ year old man talked to me how happy he was to be back there since he was there during World War 2 as an American soldier.
A Brief History Class - Part I
I was strolling along the banks of river Neckar the other day, taking some photographs of the Old Bridge while waiting for the sun to set.
“Too bad it’s under renovation, huh.”
I thought I heard someone talking to me from behind. So I turned around and there was this middle aged man smiling at me.
“Yeah. I came all way here……and it’s under renovation. What a bad timing..”
And then he pointed towards the castle sitting on top of the hill behind the bridge.
“Have you been up there before? Do you know who destroyed it?”
He was referring to the Heidelberg Castle (Heidelberg Schloss in German), the landmark of Heidelberg. It was first built as a fortress in the 12th century and then upgraded to a palace in the 15th century.
But what remains today is only it’s ruins. It was destroyed by Louis XIV and his French troops in 1689 when the war erupted.
“Do you know what they did to it”
“They stuffed the bottom of the watch tower with black gun powders and blew the hell out of it!”
Then he went on explaining the conflicts and wars between Germany and France up to the first World War.
“Heard of the Treaty of Versailles?”
I shook my head.
It seems that I’m in for a brief European history class.
“There was this leader, you know. Gustav Bauer. I think he must be crazy and went to sign this murderous treaty with the Allied Forces after World War 1″
“Because of this treaty, we have to give back East & West Prussia (today’s Poland) back to Poland, Eupen Malmedy to Belgium (near to where I am), Saarland & Danzig to the League of Nations, Alsace-Lorraine to the Frech and a few more that I couldn’t remember exactly.”
“We had to give back our colonies in Africa, Tanganyika (today’s Tanzania), Namibia, Botswana and Rwanda-Burundi.”
“And the worse thing ever was we accepted full responsibility for causing World War 1 and we have to pay out compensations to other countries for the damages!”
“You see, we were getting stronger and stronger in the early 1900’s and was about to overtake England and France as the main powers in Europe, economically and military strengths. They couldn’t let this happen as it would cause an imbalance of powers in Europe.”
“So, they put restrictions on us. They forced us to reduce our army, they reduce our lands…”
“And we went backwards..”
“Until a nationalist came and woke up the country in 1939…”
To be continued in Part 2.
IKEA-ed
It was just minutes before lunch time. I was getting ready to walk out of the room to prepare my lunch and suddenly a email appeared on my mailbox. It was from the real estate agent.
I thought I told you to checkout before 11am! They called me saying that all your belongings are still there. Please checkout NOW, otherwise you’ll need to pay the bill for today, yourself.
And she attached a email from 3 weeks ago asking me to checkout before 11am, cc-ed it to my secretary.
Before I even get to pickup the phone to call her, the secretary came in and asked me to go checkout the apartment right away. They won’t be paying the bills if I was charged for today’s stay. My initial plan was to checkout after work as the landlady of my new apartment is only available after 6pm. So, I totally forgot that I need to be out by 11am.
There I went. I had only 1 hour.
In 1 hour I had to go back to my apartment, pack my things up, checkout the room, then take a taxi to the new apartment, some 2km away. When I finished packing, I realized that there are quite a lot to carry. A luggage bag, 2 backpacks and 5 bags of foods in all. Some of the foods were mine, some were passed to me when my colleagues left.
The heavy rain this afternoon just made things worse. Within minutes of calling them, the taxi arrived but it was parked some 100m away. And I had to carry everything to the taxi under the rain.
The new apartment was very near to the main train station, less than 200m away. There was no elevator. Again I had to carry all these bags 3 floors up. I ended up staying at the roof unit.
Afterall the packing, carrying things around while getting wet under the rain, I was greeted with my new apartment for the next 4 months.
It was definitely much better than the old one.
Everything in this new unit is from IKEA. I can even see the phrase For IKEA From Whirpool on the microwave cum oven. I feel much better here. At least now I feel more at home. The previous apartment (was it even an apartment?) had the bed, toilet, kitchen and living room everything in 1 room.
I was complaining about the old apartment to my colleagues when I first came and they told me to see theirs where the kitchen is inside the cupboard! The only good thing was that it’s very near to downtown. Downtown is now 15 minutes walk away, not too far either.
Anyone coming here?
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