Back in the day, when we were on station off a certain coast, we used to joke about the day when our countries would have normal relations and we could take liberty in the ports we were surveilling.  

Time changes everything, and I find myself finishing a trip with my wife in one of these countries--four of them, actually--Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. I picked up this beauty in a junk shop on the main square in Tallinn.  It is a Soviet submariner's pin, the equivalent of our "dolphins".  Just a chunk of metal but evocative of a lifetime ago that I spent underwater, seeking out the very sailors who wore this. If you had told me forty years ago I would be taking a vacation in one of the countries behind the Iron Curtain, I would have responded with a dismissive "sure."

Just shows you how things have changed and is instructive in that whatever you think is fixed now will probably be a distant memory in the future.