Originally Posted by Sliceback

What's your knowledge of living under, or near, Communism? I grew up in W. Berlin, surrounded by 'communism', and I always shake my head when people compare the U.S., in any fashion, to communism. One teacher in particular had been a people smuggler so the Stasi were after him. He had to fly in and out of W. Berlin as the DDR had an arrest warrant out for him. Listening to his stories was fascinating. As a kid you don't realize you're in the presence of a hero. Buddy and I used to head towards the fence (mostly a fence with mine fields and fields of fire, brick wall was only in downtown Berlin, concrete wall was in urban areas) and threw stones over the fence to see if we could set off any mines. Buddy "you choose a big double trunk tree for us to hide behind in case a mine went off." We had' the discussion about the DDR guards shooting at us. Yeah, where does that happen in the U.S.?

Previous posts commented about talking about passions and not shop. But shop can be fascinating also - "tell me about your background." A couple of young guys have *****ed "I don't want to talk about that." When the guy's story starts with "I grew up in behind the Iron Curtain. When they wouldn't let me fly I decided to walk through the mines fields to find freedom." Another guy - "I was a nation/international caliber small boat sailor (I forget the type but we had sailing to talk about since I did some basic stuff). 'They' wouldn't let me compete outside of the Eastern Bloc because they didn't trust me. Finally they decided they could trust me and I went with the Polish national team to London. They were right, they shouldn't have trusted me. Within 10 minutes of passing immigration I'd escaped. I went to the Equadorain embasssy because I figured they'd be watching the U.S. embassy closely. The Equadorians took me in." Holy schmooly. Talk about fascinating, courageous and bold, people. Walking away from EVERYONE they know, risking death and/or imprisonment, to go to a foreign country for freedom.