24 years ago today---maybe it seems like no big deal now, but back then? The earth moved.

[DFW]

64. I traveled to Leipzig a few weeks after reunification

The old eastern institutions (VEBs etc.) were still intact, and many of the people working there still treated their "customers" as if they were State officials who couldn't be bothered, even though that status had officially ended a few weeks before. It took some time for that mentality to disappear.

As an ironic note, there was an article in the international edition of the New York Times today about how the flight attendants on the Russian Airline, Aeroflot, known for being somewhere between uncaring and nasty in the Soviet days, are now among the most friendly and attentive. It seems the Russians have learned that good service does have its good sides.

In the old Soviet days, my father was with a group of journalists traveling with some president or other, and the ones not on Air Force One were in an Aeroflot plane from Moscow to Leningrad. They got served a meal with some unfamiliar kind of fish. One of the American journalists dared to ask one of the Aeroflot flight staff what kind of fish it was. Insulted as if he had asked her to reveal deep state secrets, she snarled, "Russian fish!" From that day on, whenever anyone in my family got served anything they couldn't instantly identify, it was instantly classified as "Russian fish!"