Moscow 1 - Avtozavodskaya metro station

The little hotel I stayed at in Moscow some ten days ago, was located in a nice neighborhood, near the metro station called Avtozavodskaya. The name rang a bell, but I thought it was because lots of russian words have the suffix ..'.skaya'.


The next day, however, I noticed on the inside wall of the station a granite plaque with names and a date on it - and it struck my memory. I remembered that in 2004 (precisely on 6 february, according to the commemorative plaque) a bomb had exploded in one of the metro train cars killing more than 40 passengers and wounding more than 120. Survivors had to walk a long distance through the dark tunnel to get rescued or to find a way out. How horrible!

                            entering  Avtozavodskaya metro station

I stood , for a while, in silence with my head bent, in recollection of those innocent people who were on their way to work, school, market, home - and never made it. They were the victims of a cruel, despicable act of terrorism.

The Young Ones

A 27- year old german  co-pilot , Andreas Lubitz, was left alone in the cockpit of a jet for a few moments, and that had a tragic outcome : 150 dead bodies scattered over a mountain in the French Alps. It has been confirmed that he was suffering of severe depression, which probably led him to deliberately smash the plane into the mountain.

At the helm of North Korea  ( an east asian, isolated, impoverished nation) - the 30 year old Kim Jong- un. He looks and acts like a spoilt boy; the problem is,  his "toys" include missiles, nuclear weapons,  and he's constantly threatening his neighboring country of  South Korea, and the USA. He runs his country like a stalinist dictator; human rights are almost non-existing there.

Since his election, the new, charming 40 year old PM of Greece,  Alexis Tsipras, is shaking Europe, and has dragged his lovely country to the edge of an economic abyss. Greece,  ancient cradle of democracy, is fast running out of cash, unable to pay its debts. Only God knows what will become of this nation.

The world we live in worships youth. Perhaps, wherever and whenever possible, we should have second thoughts on appointing young people to lead the crowds above, in the sky, and those below, on the earth.

THE DIVERS

Lately, I've been reading about the indonesian divers struggling in the Java Sea to recover pieces of the Air Asia jet and dead bodies of the passengers and crew that were on that unfortunate plane crashed on 28 December 2014.

Java Sea is a shallow sea which lies beteen the indonesian islands  of Borneo, Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi.(see the blue contour in the above Web picture).
Historically, it is known for 'the Battle of Java Sea' in World War 2,  when the naval allied forces were defeated by the japanese( on February 1942).

The divers were (still are, as not all bodies have been recovered) struggling not only with bad weather conditions, but also with the sights of disaster and death. Their task was not merely to locate and retrieve objects and bodies , but also to assess possibilities and take hard decisions on the spot.
It is easy for us to say "someone has to do the job", but it's terrible for those who actually do it. It might traumatize their whole life.

Anyway, the divers' struggle with the sea and weather will in its end allow a decent burial to the the victims, bring closure to their families,  make it, perhaps, possible (through the analysis of the recovered  'black boxes'), to learn ways of preventing such catastrophies in the future.

These people- the divers, deserve our highest esteem and appreciation for their efforts.