11th of September 2001

It was about 15:30 when my mother called me away from computer to tell that WTC had been hit in New York. At the time I was only vaguely clear of the whole existence of the Twin Towers. Even so, after watching the news broadcast only few minutes, I got tired of it and returned to computer.
Not long after, my mother called me back - another tower had been hit.

I don't think I understood then what that meant.

I didn't understand it well the next day either. A friend of mine - who made a point of being anti-American - said something about them asking for it.

Now, six years later, it leaves me wondering. I wasn't terribly taken by USA myself. I had learned of the contras and the toppling of democracies not long before, and couldn't quite grasp the difference between nation as an entity, the person at the helm of the state ship and the people who voted him to power. It all blurred together, into a fairy tale creature called America who didn't care about the rest of the countries and was on pollution spree (Bush had not long before announced of not taking part in Kyoto).

During the following months and years, USA launched two wars, openly ridiculed Europe and threw away all the credits they had gotten in the tradegy. Carrying stuff thru airports became more difficult - they still didn't find the Swiss army knife forgotten in the backpack, but now you couldn't carry any water and I had to remove shoes before getting to the tax free zone. I read about USA abusing records of EU citizens when they entered on American soil and stories of a reporter who got jailed at JFK for a week and then turned back because ten years earlier she had overstayed her visa by a day.

I begin to realize the difference administration does to a country, and how well Clinton arranged his foreign policy.

I feel like something is happening, now. Something monumentous, something with a solid date that starts a new era. It is often so that every decade has an event that characterizes the following decade; WTC, Berlin Wall, invasion of Czechoslovakia and Apollo 11...

I feel something like that is coming. I don't know what, and I might be wrong, but somehow it all seems so very omnious. And, as so often these days, it has something to do with USA. And I don't think it's anything joyous, like Apollo 11 and Berlin Wall was. I think it's still becoming worse.

I'm scared. At some point future changed from something that one looks forward to to something you are vaguely scared of.

And back in September 2001 they had a moment for silence for the people who died, at 10 o'clock, in the beginning of the history period. I was late for the class and while sitting down I wondered why everyone was silent and what the hell was going on. In a way, I'm still wondering.