Soviet Collectives Ch6/pg 8

One day long ago before the War, my mother and her sister were in the Gnieballen cemetery. They came upon an extra stone that marked a grave near the family sites. When they returned home they asked Mama about who was buried there. She gave them the usual ‘don’t ask questions’ response. Sometime later, they were again at that same cemetery. They went to check on that curious marker they saw at their last visit. It was gone! A mystery! How could a grave marker disappear? Even more mysterious is that later they found it stashed in the attic of their own home. My mother always suspected it was the grave site of a child her mother had out-of-wedlock after WWI, before she married Julius. This child was the result of a brief liaison with a soldier passing through the area in World War I. There were several fierce battles in this area, notably in August 1917 as described in Solzhenitsyn’s novel of the same name. The grave and the baby were never spoken of, but so much of what occurred was never discussed. Family secrets, shame, disappointments.
After parking the car properly and securely, we got out and walked into the woods on the hunt for the Redetzki family cemetery of Gnieballen. Mom has a vague idea of where this cemetery was, but the woods back then were not as dense and widespread as they are now. It seems most all of this forest growth has occurred since the war, at least according to the topographic maps I have to guide me in my quest.
The Soviets in their drive to establish big collective farms effectively put an end to the European practice of small, farms scattered across the countryside. It disappeared from the former communist countries as they were organized into collectives owned by the state. In the U.S., the small towns began disappearing with the advent of farm mechanization and the automobile. The depression and dust bowl problems quickened this process. But the Russians actively destroyed the villages in part to obliterate traces of the previous cultures, and mainly to facilitate the collective system. They didn’t foster independence, you worked together for the greater good, or that was the dogma they put forth. They eliminated houses in areas where there were housing shortages. People forced out of homes, out of farm plots, forced out of means to support at least themselves. The great plan looked good on paper but in practice was a dismal failure.

Drunken Louts

Any ethnic group is disgraceful when drunk. Today I had ample opportunity to for observing drunk US fans. My god, when Donovan got that goal in the last minutes you would have thought it was the feat of the century. They should have gotten a goal much earlier. The enthusiasm of the crowd did not match the action. And every other word seems to be fuck. So I won’t be at the pub on Saturday. I don’t need endless USA chanting. The fervor of fans can be hard to deal with but US people take it to a patriotic extreme.
I always claimed the US fetish for flags, god in government, slogans and love it or leave it attitude results from the country’s short history and feelings of inadequacy among the population.
I take back the statement about any drunk ethnic group being disgraceful. The Mexicans who were in the pub for the match last week were really quite nicely behaved. Their fevor didn’t extend beyond the bounds of commonly acceptable behavior.
All this flag waving. We do not need to fly more flags in this country. Does anyone have any doubt as to whether they strayed into Mexico so they need the security of plenty of flags? Dictators and tyrants love the decorations and slogans. Witness Hitler, Stalin, any African dictator, most Latin dictators.
Let’s emulate the Canadians more.
wonder how home prices are in Canada? But the exchange rate isn’t that great.

Hotel Lithuania Ch 3/pg 3

Check in is efficient and English is spoken! I find out where I can exchange money since I couldn’t do it before the trip. The currency, Litas, is not available outside the country. Just not a whole lot of demand for this money on the world currency markets let alone at my local bank. The rate is also fixed by the government making it not desirable for trade on exchange markets.
The lobby looks familiar just like so many other big hotels. Off to one side is a restaurant, a gift shop nearby and of course a postcard rack. I head over to take a quick assessment of significant sights in town. Looks like any middle European city, the usual old buildings and an occasional monument on the marketplace. Everything seems modern, clean, and nice. We realize how very tired we are, exhausted and ready for bed.
The porter takes us to our room, how nice, all of us with the two suitcases pressed into the tiny elevator. I read the signs for massage and sauna and advertisement pictures of lovely people enjoying a big classy restaurant. This is a really big hotel, but we are here for one night only. We’ll have another chance to explore before leaving the country when we stay here again in order to catch a very early morning flight home.
Our room is tiny! Décor is a sort of Scandinavian style. Let’s call it northern European modern. There is room for the two beds and a chair, us and that really big suitcase. It’s not as bad as the hotel I once stayed in London; there I nearly couldn’t move both me and my suitcase into the room at the same time. We do have a private bath which is always a nice perk. The hotel has obviously been remodeled not too long ago, but as long as Mom and I coordinate our movements, and don’t change course abruptly, we’re fine in the tight space. No need to unpack much as we won’t be here long.

Communists aren’t under our Beds

News from an acquaintance in Germany:
Silvi’s mom basically squandered everything she had. The government had already assessed the children’s income and wealth in order to ask them to contribute to their mothers monthly nursing home bill (Pflegegeld). She didn’t have a big pension either. The stuff she amassed 20 years ago which had value were expensive books which Silvi and her brother had to throw in the dumpster when she moved into the nursing home. The library (and nobody else for that matter) didn’t want them. So in the end there are a few photo albums left and clothing that nobody wants. The good people at the nursing home added to the memorable experience. While Silvia had intended to donate clothing and other items to less fortunate inhabitants of the home, the management already helped themselves distributing stuff among the old folk without her consent. When Silvia arrived the next day at the home, she found the rest sitting in the room, carelessly stuffed into blue garbage bags. Only in Germany …. The little money that was left covered the funeral. Case closed. Silvi can now go on with her life. This is Socialism in a former Communist state.

After reading about Silvi’s mom, it kills me when Americans call Obama a socialist. A young women in my census class made a statement about the government becoming communist. I told her you say that only because you have no idea what it is real communism or totalitarian state is like. She didn’t say anything else.
And I put forward that if you ask any refugee who came to the US (from lovely places like Iraq, Somalia, Vietnam, China, etc) if this country is now becoming one of those awful ‘socialist’ totalitarian states, they will tell you NO. My parents never thought this country was getting like Communist East Germany (except when I was forced to contribute to the United Way!). The ones making these claims (Palin, Tea Party) just don’t know what their talking about. I read that there was a protester at U of M Saturday that had a Obama sign with a hammer and sickle on it. He is showing what an idiot he is.
Americans are really such wimps. If someone cuts back on their soda pop consumption, it’s communism. What do they call it when someone kills your family because they are a different ethnic group? Or you they force you to join a radical political party in order to go to college. Or you have to spy on family and friends so you can keep your job?

Darkness in Palanga Ch 3/pg 1

We arrive in Palanga, Lithuania in the pitch dark of night. It is after ten pm. The plane is very small so there aren’t many passengers to handle. We still have to wait around in the very small terminal for officials. Finally here they come: customs, passport control and various uniformed personnel who just stand around. Did they have to wake them up, were they sleeping maybe? Or is this just a bureaucratic show of authority, you know, “let them wait”. I last experienced this attitude in the Bahamas upon landing at an airport on a remote out island. Thought it was just a Caribbean thing. Then there is the U.S. The officials all stand behind their official podiums, awaiting your arrival, ready to scrutinize you’re papers. Others intently stare at the crowd from the sidelines, scanning faces for guilty looks.
We could scarcely have surprised these Lithuanians officials with our plane – nothing is going on and planes don’t arrive without notice, so why aren’t they ready for us? The terminal is dark. Perhaps the lights don’t work. There are only a very few signs posted around the large hall. No bright commercial advertising typical of other airports. No travel posters, no resort or hotel ads.
Passport and customs procedures alone tell me that the days of Communist ways of doing things are long gone. It is all pretty easy to get done. Nothing spoken, no questions. Nobody slowly checking your identification details waiting for you to break a sweat, repeatedly glancing from your photo to your face, like in the good ole days when you endured examination in no man’s land. All while the German Sheppard’s patrolled. Now we just have to figure out how to get out of the airport and make the journey to our hotel in Memel city (Klaipeda). I forgot to plan for this little detail.

What’s Happening to American Workers

If you think you have it bad in these times, just talk to someone else. Here is an experience from a friend of mine at Priceline Call Center:

We just had a boat load of newbies released to the floor, oh my they are still wide-eyed and bushy-tailed and so eager to please, their voices brimming with excitement (in the false belief that they might be able to help their customers). My new neighbor Nancy (the one with the ambulance incident) and I keep laughing, we wonder who long this excitement will last. She told me last week that our team lead Roger (the author of the notorious e-mail) put her through hell a view weeks ago. She is supposedly “a rebellious” character and “insubordinate” (she unknowingly stepped on the big ego of this little freak). No wonder she ended up in the ER. Stress at work, crap going on at home, on top of it she’s on some mild form of Prozac. She’s living in constant fear to get fired, she’s the sole bread-winner. Looks like compared with that I do actually have a fantastic life!

What has happened to workers in America? Why do these same workers belittle European countries, as socialist – buzzword for communist – because their workers don’t just live to work, but have real lives with vacations, healthcare and job security unlike anything in the U.S.

Ch1 Plan pg 4

And for the German tourist vacation destinations, would you rather lie on the beaches of Mediterranean Majorca or on the Baltic Sea in Lithuania – not a hard decision. After the war those cold communist resorts never attracted westerners – it was all so Socialist and drab and not really fun places on top of being just damned hard to gain entry into. They might not let you back out! You know – Capitalist pig trying to poison pure communist youth spreading drugs and corrupt musical influences. Most of the old resorts stayed alive serving the party faithful and the communist elite; they were choice locations for the party favorites who weren’t quite favored enough to warrant a trip to the west.
So Communism fails and these countries are suddenly open! While the economies of the Eastern countries are a wreck, they quickly learn that tourists bring money. And many tourists are interested in travel if only because it was off limits for so long.
Now that brings me back to the internet and Lithuania. Browsing around one day I encounter quite a few web sites devoted to accommodations and sightseeing in this region. I do that because my mother’s homeland sits in what is present day Lithuania. Even though Grandma had nothing good to say about Lithuanians, it was clear that the proximity was close in our genealogy, closer than Grandma let on. My father’s homeland is in the portion still occupied by ethnic Russians to this day. A few years ago I considered a visit to the Russian area, Kaliningrad Oblast, with my East German cousin. Our fathers were brothers, raised on the family farm and tavern back there. Both of us hoped to have some sort of cathartic experience by visiting our ancestral land. We probably longed for that connection to the family past that was denied us by the war. On the other hand, both of us were born as a direct result of those same circumstances. Had there been no war, we wouldn’t exist.

Ch 1 Plan pg 2

The hypocrisy of communist ideology was that for any capitalist currency, like dollars, they quickly put aside their ideals. I could visit, but they couldn’t dream of coming out the other way. Any travel wasn’t easy. I needed a special visa just to visit relatives. Fortunately I could stay family with as hotels were scarce; foreign had to use specially designated hotels. Once you got the visa you could only be in certain parts of the country, couldn’t travel outside the county or province. And then I had to register with police in the county seat upon reaching my destination and before I left.
Oh yeah, and then there were the U.S. State Department warnings about the risk of being kidnapped and held for ransom by the communist menace. For years my father refused to go back, but that was mainly out of fear of not being able to get out again. He had enough of being held by the Soviets. Years in a prisoner of war camp and the life in the GDR were more than enough up close and personal time.
All said, these had not been good places to visit, especially when so many other countries actively encouraged travel, not discouraged it. You only went east to see relatives, or if you were the odd person in complete denial about the benefits of living in a worker’s paradise.
Well, then comes 1992 and communism collapses. This affords opportunities for entrepreneurs, western investment money and tourists! Initially, in Lithuania, tourists are only Germans who long to go back to rekindle memories of the places they left in their youth, as fast as they could run at the end of the war when Russian troops pushed them west. To the rest of the world these places are pretty unknown; they are so isolated geographically at the east end of the Baltic Sea. And they lack infrastructure necessary for tourism. So who would go there?