Epilogue

So – what did I learn and discover during my summer vacation?

“Killing Me Softly With His Song” is the national anthem of Albania… maybe not officially, but I swear that you can’t sit in a café or restaurant anywhere in Albania without hearing it, and for the rest of my life I’ll think of my first mission as an elections observer whenever I hear the heartbroken voice of Roberta Flack circa 1972…

It’s good to be Liberal… to walk the streets of Vienna, Baden Baden, Mulhouse, Lyon and Paris and see street signs for “John F. Kennedy Platz” and “Boulevard President Roosevelt.” Somehow, the names Ronald Reagan and George Bush were conspicuously absent…

It’s good to be Canadian…to be an English-speaking tourist who doesn’t have to answer for a foreign policy that is almost universally seen – from Albania to Austria to Germany to France to Turkey – as being… well… use you imagination…

It’s good to be exposed to unfamiliar and unexpected surroundings… to sleep in places you normally wouldn’t sleep, eat foods you normally wouldn’t eat, use Turkish toilets you normally wouldn’t squat over, and to “rely upon the kindness of strangers…”

It’s good to “get off the plane” as a friend has described it – to take advantage of the unexpected opportunities that life presets us with…

With luck, I’ll be able to participate on an OSCE mission about once per year – and although I seriously doubt that I’ll turn every opportunity into such an extended vacation, I can’t imagine turning down a chance to volunteer as an elections observer again.

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SPB