I almost didn’t want to write anything about the horrible attacks that took place in Paris, because I didn’t think I could write anything that hasn’t been said already.  However, this attack really affected me on many different levels: as a world traveler, as a rock music fan, but, moreover, as a global citizen.

I spent two years living in Europe (in Germany as a student and in Czech Republic as a businessman), and these attacks really hit me as the news was coming into my smartphone starting with the bomb explosions outside the football stadium and the horrible massacre that took place at the Eagles of Death Metal show.

I was lucky to see the Eagles of Death Metal this past summer in Germany. They are fun loving group of guys who play fun, dancing, rock and roll music.  I am really sorry that over a hundred of their fans and friends were murdered so brutally in front of them.  They and the victims are great people who didn’t deserve this.

The one thing about this is that Julian from the Whigs was touring with them as well.  The Whigs are an Athens, Georgia band I absolutely love, and one of my good friends, who works as a photographer, has taken many pictures of them.  While I don’t know any of these musicians personally, Athens Georgia is my hometown and everyone there is like family to me.  I’m really saddened that something like this hits so close to home.

All of this kind of reminded me of what it was like to be a student in Germany in 2001.  I was in Heidelberg when the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks of 11th September 2001 happened.  Social media, smartphones, and digital news media didn’t exist back then, so I only saw the images and video the next day, and it was only the next day when I was able to talk with my mother using a prepaid telephone card in a telephone booth.  Times certainly have changed since then.  Since I was speaking only German at the time, I didn’t hear the term “9/11” until 2002 when I landed back in the United States expecting my parents to greet me at the terminal.  They were not at the terminal. I had to walk to baggage claim where they were waiting for me as my dad explained to me, “Ever since “9/11″ they don’t let any non-passengers go to the terminal anymore.”  To this day, I still can’t bring myself to describe those attacks openly as “9/11.”

With the current refugee crisis, the rise of right wing radicals, and now this horrible attack, I really fear for the stabilization of Europe as a whole.  I know the world is mourning the victims together and showing strength and solidarity, but at the same time I know that terrorists are planning more attacks, and right wing radicals and Neo-Nazis are using this as fuel for their hate filled messages.  As an avid world traveler and as a person who has brown skin, I honestly don’t know how I am going to be viewed and whether I will have to look over my shoulder the next time I explore a foreign land.  Furthermore,  there were so many young, innocent lives taken away, and all that remains are pain and sorrow for their families.  I honestly don’t see anything good coming from this.

Through social media, I’ve been in contact with my friends in Germany and the rest of Europe.  I found out that two of my friends in Paris are safe and accounted for.  I am a born U.S. citizen and Coloradan, but, moreover, I am a global citizen.   I have watched German news, British news, and American news coverage of these events just to remind myself of that.

If anything, I hope that we as a whole remember that we have a lot more in common with France than we actually realize.