[Not far away, a man is handing out packages of cookies and chocolate from the back of a truck, bouquets of flowers are being handed out from a van, and the British Army (this is the British sector) is distributing hot chocolate and soup from a tent. (The weather is very cold.)
[As we walk along the west side of the Wall, along a path that used to be off limits since it's technically in East Berlin, we see hundreds of people with hammers and chisels breaking their piece off the wall. Other people are climbing to the top by ladders and poles. The West Berlin police are trying to keep people from climbing on and hammering the Wall, but as soon as they leave, more people come. When we get to the Brandenburg Gate, there are even bigger crowds. There are rumors that it will open today, and journalists, TV crews, and spectators are on hand. Vendors do a good business in t-shirts and hot mulled wine. Various groups are demonstrating at the base, and there is much new graffiti, even though there are barriers to keep people away. East German border guards walk on the top of the Wall, and one of them accepts a bouquet from a young woman below. A fat man in a ten-gallon hat buys East German money from two East Germans. Everyone seems happy with the transaction, and they pose for pictures. An American woman tells me that her friend came all the way from Scotland to be there today. East German border guards look through holes in the Wall, and tourists look back.
[Anyway, that was the atmosphere a month before. As you'll see, things had calmed down a bit since then:]
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December 26, 1989 - Berlin
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By the Brandenburger Tor. I came in by the Lehrter Stadtbahnhof and walked along the Spree. I saw a bridge the ended right in the middle of the river, before it reached the other side (and the Wall). Watched trains run along the wall on the other side. One train had both East and West German cars on it. I walk by the memorials again. One of them: 'Ballonflucht: Maerz 1989.' Written under it: 'Denk an dieses Jahr!!! An dem Opfer und dem Taeter!' ('Think of this year!!! Of the victim and the one who committed the act!') East Germans walking along the western side, pointing out landmarks to their children that they've never seen from this angle. A hole in the Wall with two East German border guards looking through. They look like kids. Passing Americans take pictures of them as curiosities: 'Look! There's two of them!'
It occurs to me that this is a wholely appropriate way to remove the Wall. To remove it as a simple government act would be somewhat empty, and would deprive the people of their triumph.
How to recognize East Germans? I'm inclined to think that middle-aged men wearing boxy variations of Greek fisherman's caps are East Germans. Also, people wearing certain types of denim jackets. I know it's superficial, but.... [Later I find out that the most obvious sign of an East German is a certain brand of stone-washed jeans.]
A group of young East Germans posing for pictures next to a hole in the Wall, with a bottle of champagne.
A West Berlin artist shakes my hand, with a piece of clay pressed in between. After he does this with lots of people, he tells me, the clay will be baked, and will go on display at an exhibition in February.
The sound here is wonderful. Just hammers on concrete everywhere.
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December 27, 1989 - Berlin
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This is a very full day. I'll try to put down as much as I can remember of what we did, along with any impressions I can think of.
The day started early. We went to Checkpoint Charlie and walked right through. It took no more than 15 minutes. No customs, no money changing. We got to the meeting place early and did a little walking around. Noticed that a number of restored buildings were going up. Looked in one direction, towards the Wall, and saw depressing dirty drab buildings. Walked by the House of Soviet Science and Culture. Children were going in for some program. Came back and waited for a while. We were approached by a man in his 60's. Speaking German, he introduced himself as Mr. Ness and said that his daughter would be meeting us, too. Soon we saw her, a red-haired woman in her late 30's named Monika. She works as a proofreader for Neues Deutschland and spoke English. We first went to Academy Square and the French Dome. Along the way we learned that not much work was being done on the buildings because the workmen, in a protest against the privileges of Berlin, had all gone home to towns like Leipzig, Dresden, and Karl-Marx-Stadt. We saw a picture of the Central Committee building. Monika joked that people were wondering why they needed such a large building now that the committee was so small.
As we walk, we talk about the economy. Mr. Ness tells us how the East Germans have to give up all their hard currency to the state in return for 'forum checks,' which can be used at hard currency stores, but are no good in the West.
We walk to the Catholic Cathedral and then to the Pergamon Museum (which was magnificent), where we met Monika's younger sister, Bettina, who works as a ticket taker on the S-bahn. She works a double shift because so many people had gone over to the west. The Nesses are wonderfully generous, not allowing us to pay for anything, although we know this must be a hardship for them. I feel very guilty about this, not for the last time.
A walk to Friedrichstrasse takes us to the S-bahn, which we take almost to the end of the line. Monika gets off earlier to go home. We'll see her later. The train goes through suburban areas of small houses. Mr. Ness tells us this all used to be open space. Now it's fairly built up, with factories and large apartment houses. In the middle of this, you'll see small village centers with about 15 or 20 houses and a few shops. Every so often we see what looks like a small hill. Mr. Ness tells us these are rubble piles from the war, which have been covered over with soil and are now used for recreation - as water slides and ski slopes.
We get off the train at one of these small villages. Plenty of open space, but a fair amount of dust and dirt in the streets. We see small piles of brown coal outside, which Mark says is extremely polluting. (Mark has a PhD in coal combustion, so he should know.) We are told that East Germany is the world's largest producer of brown coal.
We walk a short way down a street to a fairly large house in which the Nesses live. When I comment on its size, we're told that it's shared by two families and that it's fairly cramped. We go inside and are greeted by Mrs. Ness, to whom I spoke on the phone the day before. Joining us for dinner is Bettina's five-year-old son, Phillip. The food is excellent, and our hosts must have put themselves out for this. We have potatoes, cutlets, weinbrand (like a whiskey), beer, pudding for dessert, and home-grown asparagus, of which Mr. Ness, a retired teacher in the building trades, is very proud. All the while, Sesame Street is on the TV for Phillip. He shows us his Christmas presents, which are pretty skimpy as these things go: some white chocolate, which he shares with us, and some match-box toys. Other presents under the Christmas tree look like household supplies, like laundry detergent. The talk at dinner is on everyday life. They ask about salaries in the US, housing prices in Switzerland. I tell them that high housing prices in Switzerland is one reason why I don't want to stay. Mr. Ness shows us his Commodore home computer with lots of software, mostly games (pirated?). He complains that the instructions are all in English. We learn that he has a son-in-law who lives in Paris and sells furniture for an East German firm; he also has a brother in Calgary. Willibald's wife is his niece. There is also family in Karl-Marx-Stadt.
After lunch we thank Mrs. Ness, and take a combination of trains, buses, and trams to Monika's apartment.
Again, we see rubble piles, large greenhouse installations, shopping centers, open space, apartment complexes, and small old town cores. Monika lives in a large apartment complex, in a prefabricated apartment - all assembled as a unit. The apartment is fairly large, with high ceilings. We meet her son Daniel (9-1/2), who speaks a little English (shyly) and their small dog. Her daughter Claudia is not there, having gone to West Berlin for the day with friends. Claudia is a speed skater, and apparently quite a good one. We learn that she is one of the top three skaters of her age (16) in East Germany, she has competed all over the world, and that she hopes to compete in the Olympics. We see her room, full of medals and also other things you would expect to find in a teenage girl's room - posters of movie stars, pictures of boyfriends, stuffed animals. The only privilege we can see is the travel to competitions. She has to practice very hard: 3-4 hours a day.
We later learn, after Monika opens up more to us and talk turns more political, the story of how Claudia once met an Austrian boy at a speed skating competition in Italy and wrote letters to him. Monika was called in to the office of the sports club director and told that Claudia would have to stop writing. He said that the boy had a girlfriend and Monika thought that he could probably produce a letter to that effect if he had to. Claudia wrote the boy one last letter saying she had met another boy. Since then, however, they've met again, and everything's been straightened out.
We have some coffee and cookies at the apartment and arrange to attend a performance of My Fair Lady that even- ing. Monika and her mother will join us. We say our farewells to Mr. Ness, then walk to the train station with Monika and Bettina. They show us the local indoor swimming pool, which is quite nice, and show us the newsstand. I thought that they were being ironic when they spoke of its 'large selection' and agreed that it was fairly small, but I'm not sure that's what she meant and felt a little bad about it.
We get on the train and talk about child care in East Germany. There's day care from six weeks, and a curriculum from one year. Monika thinks they do a pretty good job.
We earlier learned about Trabis. An East German earns about one thousand Ost-Marks per month. The car costs 33,000 M, and takes 12 years of waiting to get. Used cars, which have a shorter waiting time, cost more: 60,000 M. Monika says with some amazement that there are people who just deal in used cars. I think she meant people who just buy a new car and resell it for a profit. What a strange economy.
Bettina gets off to go to work, and we continue on to Alexanderplatz, the big square in the center of the city. We walk to an exhibition space where New Forum and the other new parties have posters and programs and sell publications. I feel like I'm standing in the middle of the nerve center of change in East Berlin. The people there are mostly young and have an air of the '60's about them (something I'll again feel in Prague). There are ecological groups, socialist groups, democratic groups, all against unification as far as I can tell. There are photographs of the big November 4 demonstrations, anti-Krenz posters, signs of solidarity with the people of Romania, and anti-US/Panama signs.
Monika explains some things to us, talks to the people, gets us some literature. We learn that she and her son attended the big demonstration, and also a later one where a human chain was built across East Germany. |
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