LJ, I Like You So Much More When You Work...
Computer lab. Fun. Two hours in here working on paper. On plus side, on page ten out of twelve and the fuckingfjkghfjsghfjghing Works Cited page is done. *Wilts.*
Research quote of the day (regarding the GDR right before the fall of the Berlin Wall): "The Germans--who, Lenin once complained, would never storm a railway station without first buying a ticket--had taken to the streets and quietly, without self-procliamed leaders, without a promise of assistance from their capitalist neighbors, staged a revolution from the bottom up. It was a democratic revolution, the first in Germany since 1918, or the West Germans had had their democracy forced on them by the Americans, much as prosperity had been spoon-fed them by the Marshall Plan. The East Germans were winning democracy for themselves, grasping their own power of self-determination. Little did they know on 4 Novemember 1989 that their victory was to last five days."
Borneman, John. After the Wall: East Meets West in the New Berlin. Basic Books, 1991.
So yeah, I meant to stop that quote after the whole storming railway station bit but the whole thing is just so interesting and revelant. Because so often Reunification is treated as something that *must* have happened and *should* have happened, the winning of the West over the East but... it's not nearly so clear cut as that and much more layered.
But, so, Hetalia people: Germany never storming a railway station without first buying a ticket. I can see Prussia in the background going, DUDE, JUST GO.