I was born in Finland in the early 60s. For nearly the first three decades of my life I never saw other people but ethnic Finns, Sami - who mostly look exactly the same as Finns, so unless they are dressed in their ethnic costumes or speak their own language you can't tell them from Finns - and Roma, who used to be the only group living in this country who actually look a bit different, although even with them the biggest difference is a different culture.
The first time I ever saw somebody who really looked different from me and the people I was used to was when holidaying in Spain with a friend and her family in my teens, then a few years later with my parents in Morocco.
Different cultures. But they weren't mixed with each other, they were confined into their countries, and sometimes to smaller groups, but groups who mostly seemed to get along because they had been living next to each other for long times.
Heh. That of course was at least partly an illusion. Yugoslavia seemed like a pretty solid single country back then.
And when I traveled around Europe later there were very few immigrants from outside Europe living here, apart from some from Turkey, mostly in Germany - West Germany back then. Scandinavian countries, and mine, were mostly pretty safe, to the point of boredom, nothing much ever seemed to happen here. There was some terrorism south of here, then done by small groups of mostly far left radicalized rich kids. And more organized crime, especially further south, but it was not something most people would ever see in their personal lives unless they got mixed in it by their own actions, or lived in those places where Mafia or some other group was based, or were rich enough that they would seem like a tempting target for any criminals. About the most exciting thing that ever happened to me was to see a few old people with the concentration camp number tattoos in their arms in a cafe in West Germany, and having the realization that the WWII wasn't quite as ancient history then as it had felt for somebody born nearly two decades after its end. Which was bit of a revelation, in spite of the fact that to my generation, back when we were young, the assumption was that most older men were veterans.
Back then politics didn't seem to be something particularly important.
And then most of that has changed in a few decades.
Because, it now seems, the people actually interested in politics were mostly the wrong people, while most of us were blissfully sleeping.
Not that different here in Europe.
I was born in Finland in the early 60s. For nearly the first three decades of my life I never saw other people but ethnic Finns, Sami - who mostly look exactly the same as Finns, so unless they are dressed in their ethnic costumes or speak their own language you can't tell them from Finns - and Roma, who used to be the only group living in this country who actually look a bit different, although even with them the biggest difference is a different culture.
The first time I ever saw somebody who really looked different from me and the people I was used to was when holidaying in Spain with a friend and her family in my teens, then a few years later with my parents in Morocco.
Different cultures. But they weren't mixed with each other, they were confined into their countries, and sometimes to smaller groups, but groups who mostly seemed to get along because they had been living next to each other for long times.
Heh. That of course was at least partly an illusion. Yugoslavia seemed like a pretty solid single country back then.
And when I traveled around Europe later there were very few immigrants from outside Europe living here, apart from some from Turkey, mostly in Germany - West Germany back then. Scandinavian countries, and mine, were mostly pretty safe, to the point of boredom, nothing much ever seemed to happen here. There was some terrorism south of here, then done by small groups of mostly far left radicalized rich kids. And more organized crime, especially further south, but it was not something most people would ever see in their personal lives unless they got mixed in it by their own actions, or lived in those places where Mafia or some other group was based, or were rich enough that they would seem like a tempting target for any criminals. About the most exciting thing that ever happened to me was to see a few old people with the concentration camp number tattoos in their arms in a cafe in West Germany, and having the realization that the WWII wasn't quite as ancient history then as it had felt for somebody born nearly two decades after its end. Which was bit of a revelation, in spite of the fact that to my generation, back when we were young, the assumption was that most older men were veterans.
Back then politics didn't seem to be something particularly important.
And then most of that has changed in a few decades.
Because, it now seems, the people actually interested in politics were mostly the wrong people, while most of us were blissfully sleeping.