Notes from a professional foreigner...

I wasn’t in the New York ten years ago, I wasn’t even in the US any longer having moved away in 1997 for Europe. The coverage this event is getting this weekend is a bit over the top for me, though if we are going to bring this event out of our closet of memories and gawk at it, this woud be the day. 

I can’t possibly relate to the stress and misery this event had and probably still does on the people who were there and saw it with their own eyes, those who lost loved ones and friends (real ones, not virtual). But in a way, I was there too. The planes hitting the building was played over and over on CNN and the likes within minutes of happening. We did all go through it together. 

That day I was in my office in Bratislava. Ian called me and asked if I had heard that a plane just crashed into the WTC? I recall exactly what I said, “Holy Shit!”. Before we could carry on he explained that another shortly followed. I then said, “Holy Fucking Shit!”. I think everyone knew then that this was no accident.

The Internet was down with the traffic load. A young Slovak woman came to me as the only American around and asked what this meant. I said, “war”.

Amazingly, I stayed at the office while everyone else went home to watch the news, it was getting on late afternoon CET. I guess I sort of hoped it was a mistake, it didn’t really happen (yes, severe denial).

On my next visit to the US three months later, I was dumbstruck by what I saw. Security and fear, and American flags on anything where I flagpole could be fastened or on any surface large enough. I was alarmed, I was a bit scared too. This wasn’t my country I had left four years earlier. This country was well on its way to an extremism of some sort, and that is never good. 

If I compare the US today to then, things have improved. But many of today’s problems took root from that period, international standing, politics leaning towards nationalism (thankfully less so today) and the fact that we have overspent ourselves badly. 

I would never suggest we forget, we shouldn’t just as we shouldn’t America’s intervention in Guatemala in ‘58, segregation, etc. But it is time to move on. And with that, it is time to go walk my dog with my wife.