Ich war mal ein austausch schuler auf Deutschland.

I was an exchange student in Germany. I went with a private organization, and made a direct exchange with a German family... their kid came and lived with my family for a year, while I went to Germany and lived with his family. This did not develop into a friendship between either of us and the other's families... we were simply too different, had values that were too far apart.

That's not really what I wanted to write about, though. I wanted to write about the fact that today is the twentieth anniversary of the reunification of Germany.

When I went to Germany in 1986, there were two Germanys, the Federal Republic of Germany (West) and the Democratic Republic of Germany (East). I went to a town named Göttingen, which was only a few kilometers west of the border. My host family took me, at one point, to an overlook, where I could look down on the chain-link fence topped with razor wire.

It was dangerous to have a united Germany. After all, a united Germany had started two world wars in thirty years. I had my doubts about the causal relationship between a united Germany and world wars, but that was the official line... there would not be a united Germany in our lifetimes, because it would be dangerous.

I wanted to go to East Germany. I got on a train bound for Berlin, but the border guards looked at my passport and turned me back. They said I didn't look enough like my passport picture. I imagine that was just an excuse, but who knows what the real reason was.

At the end of the year, I reluctantly left Germany. If I could have figured out a way to stay, I might well have. I was mostly happy in Göttingen. I had friends, I liked the atmosphere of the city... the only thing in the whole town I didn't like, actually, was my host family.

But I didn't have the resources to stay, so I came home to Arizona, and a while later, joined the Navy. Which is where I was in November 1989. I don't remember President Reagan's "tear down this wall" speech, but I do remember feeling very relaxed about being in the Navy, feeling that the likelyhood of the war we'd been dreading throughout my childhood was now very low. (I was surprised, a year later, to find myself in a completely different war... but that's another story).

I remember watching on the television on the mess deck of USS Papago (ATF-160) as the wall began to topple. I was surprised and overwhelmed that the world could be so reasonable for a change.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to return to Germany since the wall came down. I'd like to. I'd like to travel in the places that used to be East Germany, to look at the architecture, to see what it's like.

Congratulations to my German friends, for being part of a country that [i]isn't[/i] a dangerous factor in world politics. Congratulations for being part of a reasonable world. And most of all... congratulations on this twentieth anniversary of the wall falling.