finnbogi wrote:This is interesting. Do Americans generally refer to Europe as the second world?
Not Europe. Communist eastern Europe, during the Cold War. It had nothing to do with the Old World versus the New World. The designations were first coined by Alfred Sauvy, who was French, in 1952.
The First World was the developed West, the Second World comprised those nations under communist rule (including Cuba, Vietnam, the Chinese empire, and the Soviet empire), and the developing Third World.
These definitions are relevant only in the context of the Cold War, but that was the context of this thread.
Some of the more privileged tubists in the Eastern Bloc countries used Western European tubas, such as Alexander and Gronitz. The Russians always liked big horns.
And Rick was right about any sort of unification before German reunification in 1989... There wasn't any. I lived in West Berlin. As I said, as an American soldier, it was easy for me to go to East Berlin to buy souvenirs, eat a cheap gourmet meal, and see things that cannot be seen today. It wasn't that easy for the West Berliners, except for the ones who married foreign military personnel. Going to West Germany from West Berlin was a real adventure. For those of us in the military, there was only one Autobahn we could use. It had a slow speed limit. We had to be in a vehicle licensed to either the British, French, or U.S. Forces (I imagine it could be a Soviet vehicle, too--but they couldn't go to West Germany!) There could only be U.S. personnel and dependents in the vehicle--no nonconnected American visitors. There were also two American military trains (to Frankfurt and Bremen/Bremerhaven), a French military train (to Strasbourg, France), and a British military train (to Braunschweig-Brunswick). Since Brauschweig was on the border between West and East Germany, for people like me who traveled with Germans into West Germany, the British train was our favorite. It traveled during the day with almost no delay. The other trains went at night and there were some extremely long waits. Of course, flying to West Germany from West Berlin was the easiest way to go--it took almost no paperwork and you couldn't really do anything wrong.
Ah, such memories!!!!
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