The second article in the series “The Revolution of 1989” presents the events as they were experienced by the soldiers Angelo and George. The first article is entitled “December 1989 – The Army and the Revolution.” Poster reading "Our kids will be free". Anno Domini: 1989 After forty-five years — twenty-five of them under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu — the communist cancer had brought Romania to its deathbed. Nothing functioned anymore; everything was disordered and broken. In this...

I arrived at the entrance to the Coromandel Forest Park as if at the threshold of a legend. The air smelled of coolness and moss, and the forest seemed to hold its breath. Time flows here by different rules: one step forward, a rustle of leaves, a surge of water-everything seems to tell you that you are entering a world older than human memory. I was searching for Wentworth Falls, hidden near Whangamatā, which Māori elders whisper was once the place where water learned how to fall, endlessly...

We left Auckland before dawn, the city still half-asleep, its motorways humming like a giant beast dreaming of movement. The bus pushed south through the Waikato plains, past fields stitched together by mist and early light. For the students, it was just another school trip; for me, standing at the front as a teacher with my first school, it felt like crossing a threshold—responsibility mixed with anticipation, authority balanced by wonder. Dawn followed us like a slow revelation. The sky...