This summer we will be remembering a lot about our recent shared history, and it made me think about the importance of the Via Egnatia in the past, the present, and the future.
This week on 4 June we had the twentieth anniversary of the 1989 Polish election that started the process that brought Solidarity to power, and then that amazing summer as the Iron Curtain started to crumble all over Europe. I was living in Germany at the time and remember visiting friends in Hamburg one Saturday afternoon. The place was full of East Germans with their Trabants parked all over; they were not the least bit worried about getting a parking ticket! In September 1989 my first daughter Hannah was born and then of course on 9 November the Berlin Wall came down. No more trips for me through Checkpoint Charlie to the East! My Cold War was over.
Today is also the 65th Anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy for D-Day. British, American, Canadian, French and Polish troops landed on Gold, Sword, Juno, ‘Bloody’ Omaha and Utah beaches after the parachute landings of the night of 5/6 June including the amazing glider borne attack by British infantry at Pegasus Bridge. It was the beginning of the end for tyranny and evil in Western Europe, but not for the East. I thought about this as we voted in the European elections on Thursday where it is believed that Far Right parties may do well once more. Have we learned no lessons or are our memories fading?
British infantry land on Sword beach 6th June 1944
The goals of the Via Egnatia Foundation can help to unite people and remind them that this road was not only a military road but a symbol for peaceful trade and movement over the centuries and can be again. Even as Europe appears to be at the start of another period of division and discrimination the Via Egnatia can play a small part in countering this.
What are your memories of 1989? Comment here on the Blog
What are your views on Europe’s future? Comment here on the Blog
[...] Thinking About 1989 [...]