Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού
Author: Lan Anh – Aschaffenburg, Germany ©Lan Anh – All rights reserved.
Beneath Invisible Boundaries
(A Perspective of a Vietnamese Economics Student Living and Working in Germany)
I stand amid Europe’s winds and city lights,
where global headlines unfold with each new dawn,
and words of conflict, energy, and power
become a daily rhythm woven into life.
Far from home, I hear voices rise
from halls where decisions shape the world,
speaking of security, nuclear thresholds,
and limits that must not be crossed
in a landscape defined by uncertainty.
I studied economics,
and so I have learned to see unseen flows:
oil moving through narrow straits,
capital shifting across markets,
and expectations themselves rising and falling
like curves that never stay still.
The Strait of Hormuz is not merely a point on a map,
but a critical node in the global economy,
where a small disruption can ripple outward
into prices, inflation, and the lives of those
who have never stood upon its shores.
In the grand decisions of politics,
I see the quiet presence of economics,
and within numbers that appear abstract and distant,
I find the livelihoods of millions
quietly embedded beneath the surface.
Between calls for independence and alliance,
between confrontation and negotiation,
the world functions as an intricate network,
where no nation stands truly apart
from the influence of the others.
Living in Germany,
I see this interdependence not as theory,
but in energy bills, in prices,
in the steady rhythm of a life
seemingly removed from conflict.
And sometimes,
amid reports of war and macroeconomic analysis,
I ask myself:
what does economic progress truly mean
if it does not walk alongside peace and stability?
The world continues to move forward,
through decisions marked by risk and restraint,
and we—though far apart—
remain part of that same system,
where every shift in one corner of the globe
can quietly reach into the lives of others in its own way.
