9/11 - Five Years After
Five years ago, I was staying in Brisbane, Australia - working as a visiting scholar at the Distributed Systems Technology Center (DSTC) at University of Queensland.
The time difference between Denmark and Brisbane is a bit inconvenient with Brisbane being eight hours ahead of Denmark. This meant that if I was to talk to Ida, I would either have to call her very early in the morning to reach her before she went to bed, or very late at night to reach her just when she got home from work.
I called Ida to say hello around 11 PM on September 11th. Ida had just got home from work and told me she was watching a special news broadcast about events unfolding in the US. Denmark is six hours ahead of New York, so when I called Ida, the time in New York was around 9 AM. Ida told me that the US was being hit by air strikes. I remember lying on the bed in the small room I rented, listening to Ida's recount of the news story and getting this surreal feeling. For a brief moment, I honestly thought Ida had completely lost it, or was drunk, or on drugs. The US was not a country hit by air strikes - it was just something that did not happen. If anyone would attempt to do so, they would be intercepted by US fighter aircraft and shot to smithereens. And if the US was hit by air strikes, the consequences would be unfathomable…
I cannot remember that much else from the conversation Ida and I had, except for the bit about air strikes. I do remember we talked for a long time and when we hung up, I sat in my room with this strange feeling. I wanted to go and turn on the TV, but the rest of house was sleeping and I did not know what to make of this story.
The next morning I hurried to work and checked out the story on the net. I recall that all through that day, co-workers would huddle up in small groups and watch the images of the planes hitting the twin towers. When I returned to my lodgings later that day, I found it in a state of chaos. There was an American boy lodging in the same house - I cannot remember his name, but he was part of a group of high school kids on a longer stay in Brisbane. I think they came from New Jersey, because some of them had parents working at, or around, the World Trade Center.
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