Today Hayden and I joined a small group of others to watch the laying of the wreathes at Rue Royale in Brussels. It was a somber occasion, with a band playing what might have been the Belgian national anthem, and a short military parade. There was a two-minute moment of silence at 11:00 am to remember the 20 million people who died in the war.

I am so thankful that we live in a time and a place of peace. Back in Australia, World War I seemed like a distant event in a far-off land. In Europe after walking through these cities which were once decimated, I can almost imagine the buildings in ruins and the streets deserted.

Now, with 93 years and another tragic world war between then and now, relationships between Belgium and Germany are so incredibly improved. The German and Belgian governments jointly supported the building of a high-speed rail that takes one from Brussels to Aachen in just one hour and four minutes. We share a currency and an open border. Germany now means winter markets and Oktoberfest and gingerbread. Here’s hoping it stays like that for many more generations to come.

I am attaining a much deeper understanding about the impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union on this area of the world. In Australia, we learned about the Berlin Wall coming down, the fall of the Iron Curtain, the liberation of millions of people from communism. However, the reality for Armenia and Georgia was quite different.

In 1990, this region was full of enormous factories, such as those for extracting copper and producing steel. Along the coast and in the mountains, huge Intourist resorts were under construction, and the Georgian mountains were the training grounds of the Soviet Olympic skiing team. Nuclear power provided electricity across the region, and cheap gas was supplied from the Russia SSR.

After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the simmering discontent in the region plunged into civil war, rife with ethnic cleaning and countless refugees. Armenia went without electricity for five years, and without gas for ten years. All construction stopped, and the factories shut down. Each country had been specialised to perform a specific function, and now that the supply lines had been cut, everything was paralysed.

Driving through the Caucasus, it is hauntingly easy to imagine life immediately after 1991. The giant factories still stand as monoliths on the outskirts of the cities, and the concrete skeletons of giant holiday resorts still ring Lake Sevan.

Now these countries must slowly rebuild themselves, redefine their identity and find a way to sustainability and progress, all while dealing with internal and external conflicts. Belarus has done an amazing job, and Minsk glimmers with promise and affluence. Armenia still bears the deepest scars of poverty and conflict, and has allied itself with Russia, its major acceptor of its exports.

Georgia has lost much from its war with Russia, and now looks to the West for its future, with many signs in English and Council of Europe flags visible throughout the city. Tbilisi has a very pleasant feel to it, with streets lined with cafes and wide boulevards for evening promenades. Georgia has a way to go before it is eligible for EU membership, but it is encouraging to see it inching away from war and slowly towards open communication and dialogue.

This book is written from the perspective of nine-year old Bruno, who has moved with his family from Berlin to somewhere out in the country called “Out-With”. His father is a soldier with a very important job, but Bruno doesn’t like the new house. It only has three stories, and he has no friends to play with. One day he goes exploring, and finds a boy sitting on the other side of a very tall fence. The boy is wearing striped pyjamas, and his name is Shmuel. This is the story of the friendship that develops between Bruno and Shmuel. It is a very simple yet powerful book, similar in some ways to the movie “Life is Beautiful”.

“Who are all those people outside?”

Father tilted his head to the left, looking a little confused by the question. “Soldiers, Bruno, ” he said. “And secretaries. Staff workers. You’ve seen them all before, of course.”

“No, not them,” said Bruno. “The people I see from my window. In the huts, in the distance. They’re all dressed the same.”

“Ah, those people,” said Father, nodding his head and smiling slightly. “Those people… well, they’re not really people at all, Bruno.”

Charles Marden makes a journey from Vancouver Island to Belgium, tracing a physical path that is similar to my own. His story, though, is one of looking backwards for answers, rather than forwards for adventure. It is 1918, and Marden has just received a letter telling him that his son was killed in Belgium. In order to try to make sense of this tragedy, he travels to Belgium to find the last place where his son stood alive.

Marden is numb and unable to comprehend the personal and global tragedies of the war, his loss so great it was impossible for me to grasp. What really shook me were the descriptions of Belgium after just after the war. I have visited these cities, now so carefully reconstructed, and it is so difficult for me to imagine them destroyed. For me, these are sunlit towns filled with happy memories, so to read of their annihilation was like learning of the abusive childhood of a dear friend.

It was like having heard of heaven and hell, and finding out, in one revelatory moment, that this is what they consisted of – not magic zones of fire, not fleecy zones of clouds, but a vaguely undulating series of muddy fields that looked like a lumpy pudding.
“Voila“, Conner said, smiling ironically. “The Western Front”.
…
Back on the island he had has a friend named Andre Slater who had a farm and grew potatoes. It wasn’t a particularly big farm, not by western standards, and yet the battlefield he stared at could have fit inside with room to spare. In the end, it was this comparison that defeated him – thinking how many boys had tried trying to cross Andre Slater’s farm.

Photo from JaaQ