By Kevin Stoda
Some years ago in a 3 partseries[1], I reviewed important events that occurred in Europe in 1989. I reflect on this now as those events will likely be what we witness again at the end of the current corona virus pandemic. (I suggest, you click on my 3 articles in the NOTES section of this blog, i.e, inorder to understand my prediction for how this is so relevant to today during our Pandemic of COVID-19.)
1989
I was living, teaching, and studying in Wuppertal German between 1986 and April 1990.
On the night of November 9, 1989, I was sleeping in my bed but was awakened with a call from my friend, Axel Kattwinkel, who informed me that the border between East and West Berlin and those Berliners who had been quarantined from each other for decades by a massive quarantine wall were suddenly allowed that evening to touch and intermingle on the streets of West Berlin (for the first time since 1961).
I was elated but nevertheless soon went back to sleep rather quickly, i.e. after hsving worked all day in the local Wickular Bier factory in Elberfeld. (I had drank beer while working and was in need of a rest. I should note that I usually only worked as a teacher 2 to 6 hours a day, instead of manually laboring, that is packing beer cases for Lufthansa airlines all day.)
Another reason why I had soon dozed off after Axel called me was likely because winds of change had been appearing throughout a divided Europe most of the 1980s. These changes had excelerated during 1989leading me to visit Moscow in January and Prague in Czechoslavakia in April just as changes began to accelerate.
I had been to West Berlin numerous times over the past 3 yearsincluding to attend a Church confrence bringing the East and Western churches together. I had also visited a group of christian environmental activists during that same visit. Meeting under the protection of churches was one way that such environmental groups and other activists in East Germany were able to meet throughout the decade.
In 1987, I had traveled to Hungary, stayed with a Hungarian named Gyorgy Bakyunin [2] , and at the very end of that trip I had crossed the border at Sopron. Sopron would play a major role for the so-called Pan-European Picnic .
In May of 1989, the Hungarian government had torn down the fence between Eastern and Western at Sopron Hungary.Soon thousands of Germans, Czechs, and Poles were flooding into Austria. Eastern Europeans on holiday nearby on a local lake in Hungary soon ffrom East to West slowly began to flood in Austria from Hungary during the summer. When this exit was plugged by August 1989, East Europeans flooded Western Consulates in Pragy. Finally, the first the trains left Prague loaded full of passengers traveled through Dresdon and Berlin into West Germany's Hamburg station in September 1989.
Then, the border virtually exploded at the Wall in West Berlin. The border guards opened the border for travel and intercourse without fanfare on the evening of November 9, 1989.
On the morning of November 10, 1989, I woke to a new and changing Europe.
I learnt that East German's were already driving around Wuppertal and in Bavaria their their Trabi-cars and shopping for bananas and sales. Within days, the new East German government would invite the opposition to create a new government and create a new way of running the country.
Poland had already begun it's own path to seperate from the Iron Curtain years before, but with the opening of the Wall in Berlin, the regime in Czechoslavakia also fell. Then Bulgaria followed suit as did the people of Romania, who killed their dictator in December of 1989. Likewise, the regime in Albania also capitulated.
PREDICTION
I predict that in the second half of 2020, peoples in the Westafter months of suffereing with a global pandemic will demand changes as they go into the streets and visit the seats of power to reclaim sovereignities that these same masses have missed out on.
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