Saturday, June 13, 2009

Dresden and the Damn Bridge

There is a function within the United Nations....and it's a bit confusing why they exist...but apparently....UNESCO's big mission....is to run something called "World Heritage" effort.

It's like a five-star club, and certainly expensive campaign is involved in some fashion...you just have to trust me on that.

So for a long time...Dresden here in Germany....was a world heritage site. Apparently, they are about to lose their status.

What did Dresden do to lose their status?

For about one hundred years...they've been talking about building a bridge over the Elbe River....and help fix up a traffic problem. To be honest, I don't see how it was it was a problem 100 years ago....but the experts in Dresden say it's been talked about for a long, long, long time.

Apparently, a major part of the UNESCO effort is that you don't fix nothing, improve nothing or build nothing. And if you can do this for 300 years....you get bonus points of some unknown variety.

The humorous part of this deal....is that someone within UNESCO says a new bridge "will irreversibly tear apart the historic cultural landscape.”

It's bad enough that foreigners get involved in your business...but to hold some status up above your head, and then kinda jab you and say new bridges will destroy culture...well, you have to start laughing.

The curious thing for me....is this a German guy or two in UNESCO saying all of this? The press is very careful in attributing who says what and won't come out to say who runs this function of UNESCO.

No comments: