Have a Grand Reconciliation Day!

Vince chipping away at the Berlin Wall in 1989

It is Reconciliation Day in South Africa, or as it is also known, the unofficial start of Christmas vacation.

I was not in South Africa when the Voortrekkers won the Battle of Blood River against the Zulu nation and declared December 16 a day of reconciliation in South Africa.

Nor was I there during the great South African reconciliation of the 20th century after Nelson Mandela was freed from prison and became President of the new democratic republic. Reconciliation Day that year took on an enhanced meaning for the South African people.

But I was there for the other great reconciliation of the 20th century, the European reconciliation when the Berlin Wall came down and Germany was once again reconciled and reunited. When Václav Havel peaceably transformed Communist Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Poland's Lech Wałęsa and his unionists brought the Soviet Union to its knees without a single shot being fired. Ukraine became self-governing again along with all the other countries who were formerly part of the Soviet Union or otherwise under Soviet control and suppression. The Soviet Union downsized and became Russia once again.

my father and his Uncle Jan

I had visited many of the Soviet block countries, as they were known, in 1985 with my father who was born in the small village of Zborov in the High Tatras of eastern Slovakia. We also visited Hungary and Poland along with Czechoslovakia. And we had visited Kiev in the USSR.

Quite a different story when I returned in 2007. Unimaginable actually in 1985. Leningrad was once again St. Petersburg. Kiev was no longer a city in Russia. Moscow had a Ralph Lauren flagship store in GUMM directly across from Lenin's tomb! I am sure Lenin was inside "rolling in his grave," as my mother would say. Red Square was awash in Gregorian chants emanating from a loudspeaker atop a nearby onion-domed cathedral. Like a call to prayer. 24/7. Keep rolling, Lenin.

Ain't reconciliation grand?