Reflections on Berlin Wall

Bonjour tout le monde!

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  That made me think of when I got to visit Berlin for the first time.  It was in 1975, I was spending the winter in Paris, and I traveled to West Berlin to visit a Stanford Band friend - Jerry Nelson.  It was February, and I spent all day traveling on the train from Paris to West Berlin.  Once we left Hanover, the train entered East German territory, which was a little disconcerting. Many East German soldiers with German shepherd dogs walking up and down the tracks and under trains for those who might try to escape that way.   Fortunately, I had just finished one year of German,so I had some conversational skills.

Arriving in West Berlin at 11:30 pm brought its own worries.  Was I at the right station?  Would Jerry be there, and if he wasn't, how was I to navigate the German public phone system (in those days, making a phone call on the public phones was different in every country, and that was after you had changed some money to the local currency - things that we no longer really have to worry about). To my great relief, he was there; we went out to a great, but smoke filled pub for some awesome sausages and potatoes.  

In those days, West Berlin was this little spot in the middle of Eastern Germany.  Travel anywhere out of the little dot required a passport, more German skills than I had, and local knowledge.  We went to East Berlin to see the museums, going through the Friedrichstrasse tram station instead of Checkpoint Charlie because it was less crowded.  Since it was winter, everyone was bundled up (see below) including the Soviet soldiers in their huge coats and furry caps.  We had to change our West German marks for East German ones (1 for 1, unlike the black market, where WG marks sold for 33 to 1 EG mark).  The main difference to me is that once inside, everything was cold and colorless.  I went from cosmopolitan West Berlin to a city where I was the only person of color at all.  Pale, blond and blue eyed was pretty much the standard look on that side of the wall, and I was the object of many stares - Jerry said it was because I was so pretty, but I knew that I was different.  I was pretty happy when Jerry and I got off the tram in West Berlin.

We also went to see the Checkpoint Charlie museum, which explains the genesis of the Wall, plus many of the ways that East  Germans used to make it out.  Small spaces created in even smaller Volkswagens, suitcases glued together that created enough room for a small woman, ladders, drilling equipment, you name it, used by those desperate to leave the East for a better life.

If you have the chance to go to Berlin, now all one city, you need to go.  See where the Wall once stood, visit the museums in the former East Berlin, plus the one at Checkpoint Charlie.  Look at some of the memorials that still have the holes and pockmarks created by gunfire during a war that is long over.  Words will fail you, as they do me at this moment.

Happy 25th anniversary, broken Berlin Wall...

Me, in West Berlin, 1975