Yesterday I went to lunch with a guy our company just hired. He’s in his early to mid 20s. We were talking about traveling to Europe, and he mentioned someone he knows who lives in Germany, in Bonn. By the tentative way in which he pronounced ‘Bonn’, it was clear that he was unfamiliar with it. I immediately started to remind him, “You know, Bonn, the capital of former West Germany.” Then it hit me that Germany has been reunited for the part of his life in which he’s been aware of foreign affairs. For him, Bonn is just some small German city.

Categories: Personal