German Reunification Day celebration

Daylight saving started today and we had the German Reunification lunch at Sorrento in Cornwall Park. The trees were in blossom and the lambs out and about, as well as gingery coloured hens and calves with their mothers. We sang the national anthem and had a toast to Germany and a lovely buffet lunch, including salmon and roast beef, after the speech. The speech was given by one of the members who had been to the former eastern part of Germany this year and asked people what they thought of 3 October, when it all happened 16 years ago. There is a bit of a wave of nostalgia about how good things were when everything was regulated by the state. There is a lot of unemployment apparently and the young people have gone to the west, or are only to be found in the university towns. People don't seem to appreciate their new free way of life, not the ones he spoke to anyway. I know a lot of firms and factories did closedown because they were uneconomic and the older workers could not get jobs after that. I think they should concentrate on tourism more as for all those years you couln't go there and there are some very historic places like Dresden,Weimar, Dessau, Wittenberg etc. Dieter has been to more of them than me but maybe the next time we go to Germany I might visit some of them too. It was nice catching up with a couple of German women who came out in the late 1960s whom we have known for all those years and meet others who have been here shorter periods but who like to gather and speak German with one another.