Cancer 143

I grew up never thinking it would be possible to travel beyond the Iron Curtain. I have been lucky enough to have visited most of the countries that were part of the Warsaw Pact, and very much enjoyed my experiences, epecially finding out that life in the East was nothing like as horrific as was portrayed, but often the standards of housing, etc were as high or higher than in the west.

Currently we are in former East Germany, the Democratic Republic of Germany. My first visit to this region involved a trip to Colditz, including breaking into the castle and finding things relating to the war. I knew my way around because the map from the board game was pretty accurate, but that is another story, one I tell all the time because it was one of the best experiences of my life (I know, I am that trivial – it is on a level with a US chappy wearing a 10 gallon hat saying ‘howdy’ to me as we walked down a gulch in Death Valley)/

We are on Rugen, the largest island in Germany, in a holiday cottage in a forest in Baabe in the eastern part of the Island. It is modern, peaceful, economically thriving, and has the threat from the AfD as in other parts of Germany. It is on 25%, the leading party. Enough of modern politics. We only arrived yesterday so I am looking forward to visiting Prora, the biggest hoilday complex built but unfinished as part of the Strength through Joy movement in the 1930s. It is massive, 4km long, and has been used for a variety of purposes, including refugees from Hamburg and from the east during the war, the East German Army after the war (there is a military museum I am looking forward to), and is now the subject of much debate about whether it is appropriate to use a Nazi-era building complex for modern purposes. End of argument, of course it is, it is just a building complex, it doesn’t do Nazi salutes or open concentration camps.

It is a symbol of how we make simple judgements about things, rather than consider nuances. We say Nazism was a bad thing (which it was), without recognising that it also did some good things, such as cheap holidays for working people and, erm….. Please don’t say autobahns, they were started before Hitley came to power.

The other place I am looking forward to visiting, which is a bit further away, is Peenemunde, the site for the development of rocketry during the war, where the V2 was developed, built and tested before reigning terror on London and Antwerp. There is also a U-Boat museum and the remains of a concentration camp at the site.

The food around here is good. At the moment I seem to live on fish, which makes sense as we are on the Baltic Sea, but I will increase my consumption of pork products over the next few days. They have decent portiojn sizes too.

We are here for two weeks. I managed to drive here OK, though I arrived a little tired. We have not seen a single British car in the area. I asked the information officer about whether they get many British visitors here and he said they don’t. That is fine by me.