The wonder that is…

radiovenice — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:46:54 +0000

…Latvia. I was recently there on vacation. It’s a fine awesome country that has some occasional endearing eccentricities. One of them being a strange obsession with television test patterns. I saw them everywhere, on t-shirts, shopping bags and this mural, though I’ve got no idea if it’s a homage to some brave television engineer patriot or simply public art by hipsters.

A mural of a TV test pattern, gracing one of Riga's minor parks. (Photo: Brett Neely)

Also awesome, the “museum” of dead Soviet aircraft at the Riga airport (air quotes because everything’s rusting and totally crazy, but they do have a former nuclear bomber and what looked like cruise missiles). Totally worth banging on the chain-link fence until the curator groggily stumbled out of his trailer, took my two euros and let me in.

A retired Mig-21 parked at Riga Airport, waiting to do single combat with a tricycle. (photo: Brett Neely)

But it was just a "reenactment"

radiovenice — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:06:00 +0000

You don’t escape the past in Germany. It’s omnipresent, like the historic water tower in my neighborhood that has a small plaque in front of it that mentions the SA took political opponents there and beat them in the spring of 1933 as the Nazis were consolidating their power.

Germans don’t forget the war because too many people died, too many institutions were shattered and Germany itself was split into two with previously core parts of Germany handed off to Poland and Russia. Even though the generation that lived and fought through the war is almost dead, the scabs aren’t far below the surface.

So while Americans think it’s well and fun to stage civil war reenactments in the US, the idea that that would happen in Germany is unthinkable. Until last weekend, when a group of military enthusiasts dressed up Waffen-SS uniforms and joined a historical parade in Sachsen-Anhalt.

History here tends to be taken very seriously, I’ve never seen newsstands so filled with historical magazines. Things are thawing. In the past few years, Germans have also become masters of spoofing Nazis. The video below is one my favorite examples. If you don’t understand the German, all you need to know is that the narrator is explaining why neo-Nazis deserve our sympathy…

Brett Neely » History

The wonder that is…

But it was just a "reenactment"