I will never forget the day when the World Trade Center was destroyed in an unspeakbale heineous act of war. First of all I live quite far away from it all, to tell you the truth very far, in Germany. I am 23 years old and think I have aged a lot through this event. I have a deep connection to America and especially NYC cause I was lucky to have spent some years there. My dad was working with IBM so I went with the family to NYC in 1983 and again in 1991. I returned to Germany in 1993. I saw the first attack on TV but never ever thought they would do such a thing. I guess nobody thought. I remember being in school and a friend of mine got a message on her cell that a plane had hit the WTC. I honestly thought that her friend who wrote her that made a real bad joke and I believed that it was a small plane and an accident. At that time I didn’t know that the Towers would fall plus I didn’t know of the other planes that crashed. When I was on the way home I heard some students speak of another attack on the Pentagon. I didn’t believe it. But through it all I learned that I had a much deeper love for NYC and America than before and I made new friends in the NYC region I had to tell them how sorry I too was about it all, and I found the love of my life over the internet. He lost many close friends that day who worked in the WTC and was reallx happy to have met me. I will visit him next month in order to get to know him better. I feel the strong need to go with him to Ground Zero and pay my repects to those killed on 9/11. I promised I would do that with him. 9/11 made clear to me how short life is and that you never know when your last day is. I learned not to complain about small issues. They are unimportant compared to those. My deepest respect to the thousands of volunteers who helped at Ground Zero! You have been an inspiration to the world! After 10 months its still hard to understand the whole thing I have been watching the special on CNN In Memoriam 9/11(01 and it brought tears to my eyes! I have been writing many poems about all this. It helped me a lot.