Posts Tagged ‘spy’

(North Korean Embassy, Prague, Czech Republic – naw, just kidding, but almost got you there!)

On the Road in Germany, Admiring Fritz and the Mighty-Might of the World’s 4th-Largest Economy
Dreaming of the 1920s When Things Were More Normal In These Parts
13:30 CET
Grooving to Stevie Wonder on Michael Ruetten’s Soul Searching

Lions and tigers and bears and…North Koreans in Prague?! Who ‘dat?

Yeah, you read that correctly. Pyongyang maintains a robust diplomatic presence here in the Sketch Czech Republic, a legacy of its previous snuggle bunny relationship with the former Czechoslovakia. A partnership that stretches back decades, long before such cute little annoyances like 1989’s Vel Rev (aka “The Velvet Revolution”).

Ties between the DPRK and today’s Sketch, oops, Czech Republic remain, much to the patchouli-daubed showerless protesting crowd’s chagrin, alive and well thankyouverymuch, chugging headlong into the 21st-century as the glorious Korean “Paradise on Earth” seeks to resurrect the DPRK’s old comradeships with its former Central European Cold War stalwarts. All this in advance of a proposed peninsular all-or-nuttin’ takeover, as per Bam Bam’s recent statements to the media.

Are you afraid yet?

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Funny how referrals work, you know? I was simply blowing though Jan Wong’s sensational China Whispers: Searching for Forgiveness in Beijing a couple of weeks back and stumbled upon Aussie author Anna Funder’s Stasiland: Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall.

Given how I suffer from an incurable case of ostologie, I leapt at the chance to snatch up my copy of Funder’s coming-of-age travelogue as soon as I returned to the Golden Burg (Prague). And – sports fans – I’m pleased to announce that I whipped through this one equally as quickly.

Get a look at this author, will ya?

Yowzahs!

But getting completely serious again (for just a moment), let’s pay due respects to Funder’s stalwart effort to compile a truly quality piece of non-fiction writing. Spliced together over the course of approximately seven years of painstaking personal research – both behind and in front of the Wall — Stasiland (affiliate link)  is the author’s attempt to give a distinctly human face to the one-time formidable, cunning, and truly thorough state security apparatus, the Stasi, by going way behind the headlines and monstrous rhetoric to the far reaches of the former German Democratic Republic’s frontiers. It was here where Funder would uncover stories of people who suffered torturously at the Stasi’s omnipotent devious hands.

A Divided Germany

The Stasi’s Emblem

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