Strangers in a Strange Land

Nothing like a trip to the continent to clear your mind from the daily grind and look at the world from a different angle.

I should add that my trip was a mixture of family and culture and with the exception of the news broadcasts shown during the halftime break of the world cup broadcasts I was relatively cutoff from the markets.

My return to the UK was to the news of the shift by the Chinese with regards to the $ peg but all in all it seems the the market activity of the past three weeks was a lot of activity with very little result.

Sort of like many of the World Cup matches-but that will be for another day.

My regular trips to Germany encompass Stuttgart and Munich, with a brief stopover in Ulm. This trip, as mentioned in my last post took us to deepest darkest Bavaria, and then to the former East Germany and on to Poland.

Bavaria was in the Bavarian Forest, nudged up against the Czech Republic. Before 1989 this area was essentially a dead-end as it bumped up against the iron curtain. In the 50's it was very backward-peasant woman would still hike up their skirts and squat by the side of the road to relieve themselves.

Today the area has Muehlbauer AG, one of the largest computer chip producers in Europe, Vaillant, a major heating and plumbing group, and as a result of it's location in the middle of the Bavaria Forest is a hiking and camping destination. In a word- the epitome of the German Economic Miracle.

Fast forward to former East Germany. The DDR had first 12 years of Fascism, and then 45 years of Stalinism. 20 years later the history of both is being eradicated as the consumerism of the west carpetbags on the coattails of the massive fiscal stimulus provided by former West Germany to it's eastern brothers.

Then cross into Poland. In 1945 the Russians expelled the German population of Pomerania and it's surroundings and replaced them with Poles that the Russians had expelled from eastern Poland when they occupied it in 1939.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the accession of Poland to the EU the border between Poland and Germany is completely open. Cross it however, and you cross from daylight into twilight. These Poles who previously bordered Belarus and the Ukraine do not speak German. They have no historical relationship to the land upon which they live. Scratch the surface and a faint hint of Germany lies exposed like the ghosts of Christmas Past.

They are strangers in a strange land.