In a few months, the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union will be commemorated around the world. But perhaps nowhere other than at its epicenters will this momentous series of events be celebrated more than in Central Europe, where embodied tensions between East and West, capitalism and communism, were highest. Even for someone who did not live in or visit the stage behind the Iron Curtain while it was down, doing so now that it has been lifted is still a strong reminder of how non-violent, historically rapid changes as well as continuities can bring about lasting peaceful and prosperous results that benefit guests and hosts, residents and newcomers alike.
The medieval town center of Erfurt, for example, about a two hours drive at German Audi owners' scarily quick pace from the busy Frankfurt Airport, was left largely intact during allied bombings and by the heavy hands of the takeover regime, eventually called the German Democratic Republic. Walking through its tight cobblestone streets to the church at which Martin Luther was matriculated, taking a picture beside his bronze statue, is a religious experience for anyone with a smidge of revolutionary idealism, whether Christian, atheist or neither. At this point in Luther's career, there were few signs that he would go on to spearhead the Reformation, just as the populist overthrow in 1989 was indiscernible to all but a few until it happened. Below the surface, each was waiting for an impetus to happen.
With the longest inhabited bridge in the world, spatially and temporally, a centuries-old gothic cathedral that can sends shivers down the spines of the most militant modernists, interspersed with as-if secret theatres playing avant-garde work, Erfurt can be a taken as a sign of things to come for those who stop to see its picturesque bunched up buildings which would make a city planner weep on the way to Leipzig, again a couple of hours away. The for the most part perfectly smooth highway roads, rolling hills with scattered villages separated by dense forests, are surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of renewable energy-producing wind turbines that would make Obama blush and a medieval miller stare in awe, and for those aware of the distant yet immediate connection between the two, both.
So far, there is no evidence whatsoever of the totalitarian Nazi and communist dictatorships that have defined the area, but not its inhabitants, for some sixty years before the Berlin Wall fell. The twenty years since have seemingly erased their apparent traits, if not their unapparent traces. What there is plenty of evidence of, what can be seen even if it is not visible, heard even if it is not audible, sensed even if beyond the senses, is an awareness of the peaceable perseverance of everyday people who serve local mushroom soups and mixed grilled meat platters to hungry tourists with a smile, offer to give directions to them without being asked, and want to show them with pride what their towns and country have to offer despite and not because of their pasts. These are some of the current events creating the future of Central Europe, in many ways unimaginable two decades ago.

