Saturday 28 August 2010

Last Post - The Pause

It turns out that the Russian habit of pausing to reflect before the start of a journey is not mirrored by a similar pause at the end.  One has arrived and one gets on with doing whatever made one come.  But not rounding things off seems somehow wrong.  Back in Oxford, the past month seems slightly unbelievable.  Did we really see the wonders of Red Square?  Did we really inhale Moscow's worst ever smog?  Did we really rip over the Gulf of Finland in a hydrofoil to a magical, fountain-filled palace?  Did we really walk in the blustery wind on the shores of the Baltic?  Did we really eat dumplings with two delightful Lithuanians?  Did we really go bowling in Minsk?

We have a great treasure-box of memories and we've also learned a huge amount.  How you can't understand the Second World War without also seeing it from the east - and what a truly world war it was, blighting lives from Liverpool to Minsk to Kaunas to Washington (the impact goes on).  What an incredibly rarity the last twenty years have been, in terms of relative peace in Europe.  The consequent potential - despite its many defects - of the EU.  The awful misery of the totalitarian soviet system and the ever-present danger of freedom being eroded again, this time through the corruption of capitalism.  All this we're only just beginning to understand - and we'll journey on.

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