Gotta love the EU

If there is one thing we have come to realize throughout our travels it is that our lives are far more privileged than we ever believed them to be.

From having had the chance to educate ourselves, to coming from stable countries to being able to use our passports to easily access so many parts of the world, we are keenly aware that we have so much more than so many.

In Bulgaria, having free access to a third Covid booster shot due to the fact that we are EU citizens (even though we are clearly not Bulgarian citizens or residents) was another show of how lucky we are to have been born in our particular part of the world.

Much can be said about the EU. It is far from a perfect place, it does not equally protect all of its nations in the same fashion (and the 2008 economic crisis was a flaming display of that) and I highly doubt it will ever achieve the status of a fully federal state. But, I am a full blown supporter of what it has given us and what it may yet give.

Where else in the world do 27 independent nations so commit to common development? Where else can citizens of so many states freely travel, work and live across borders with such liberty? Where is there such a common commitment to the well being of citizens?

The more we travel the world, the more we see that people are the same everywhere. The more we see that it is cooperation and not division that generates prosperity.

During our time in East Africa what we saw were countries struggling to get vaccines available to its population whereas in the EU the difficulty seems to be getting the population to mobilize in taking the excess vaccines purchased. To the point that in order for us to get ours we merely had to walk into a clinic in what is objectively a foreign country to the both of us. What a privilege!

Gotta love the EU!