Remember, the Arctic didn't have any ice. And the Northwest Passage was wide open. They were raising grapes in Scotland for God sakes, had a huge winery. Iceland was a farming community. As some of the glaciers retreated they found villages that were covered with ice.
In that sense, I became politicized because the people in the coal mining villages who were involved in the struggle knew why they were there. But they couldn't understand why some pop star from London would want to be there.
The Marianne Vos Route goes through the seven villages of Aalburg, where I grew up, and celebrates my World and Olympic titles with a number of benches along the route, where you can stop and rest your legs. You'll see the white windmill in Meeuwen and, in Babylonienbroek, a statue of the silver bike I rode to celebrate my Olympic track win.
Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist.
I belong to the generation of workers who, born in the villages and hamlets of rural Poland, had the opportunity to acquire education and find employment in industry, becoming in the course conscious of their rights and importance in society.
But the war on terror as I have repeatedly said in the past, and the Afghan people believe in it, in truth, is that the war on terror is not in the Afghan villages or homes. Its in the sanctuaries, it is in the training grounds, its in the motivation factors and the money that comes to it.
Because the nights bring the threat of invasion and terror to the villages, thousands of children in northern Uganda have become night commuters, leaving the nightmare of capture behind for the safety of the city.
One of the things that really got to me was talking to parents who had been burned out of their villages, had family members killed, and then when men showed up at the wells to get water, they were shot.
All the real things in Russia are done in the villages.
It is indeed fitting for me to make a comment to the effect that it takes a village to raise a child because I have lived in many villages down in deep south, and everyone there who played a part in my stewardship as a young man growing up and as a professional, they have given me unstinting support.