An American in East Berlin

Munich, 1981

“We are spirits in the material world.”
(The Police – from Ghost In The Machine)

“Rudi, Michael, kommt schnell!” Tante Elfie summoned Onkel Rudi and me to the sitting area where the television was already warmed up. (Back then, “CRT” was nothing more than the abbreviation for the “cathode ray tube” that conjured the picture onto a television monitor, not that I understood much about such things. I still don’t. But it took about a minute for the screen to “warm up” and the picture to become clear, at least as clear as it could be in those days.) The television, along with most of the other electronic devices in the small apartment, was a product of Siemens, the company Onkel Rudi worked for until his heart condition forced his early retirement.

The sharp voice again demanded our attention. “Rudi, Michael, schnell! Es beginnt!” [I had considered inserting footnotes for German phrases, but I believe the intelligent reader will probably figure them out. Otherwise, I’m guessing there’s something on phones these days that can assist.]

Onkel Rudi and I grimaced from either side of the table on the narrow twelfth story balcony. It was one of those rare July days when the air was clear enough to see the distant Bavarian Alps beyond the Munich skyline with its iconic BMW cylindrical highrise headquarters building and bowl-shaped museum beside it. [Over the years, I was always surprised that very few of my students knew that BMW stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke, which also happens to work in English – Bavarian Motor Works.]

Tante Elfie had explained to me that the air quality, and a host of physical maladies affected by it, could be gauged by the visibility of the mountains. I don’t know if I was entirely convinced of the truth of this, but as the years have passed I’ve come to realize my elders were right about a great many things, even – and especially – things that may have seemed a bit nuts at the time.

Some distance to the right stood the Olympic Tower, Munich’s tallest structure. In addition to its revolving observation deck, the Olympiaturm also served as a giant radio and television antenna, and is part of the complex built for the 1972 summer Olympic games where American swimmer, Mark Spitz, won seven gold medals, the record at that time. (Interestingly, Spitz is the German word for peak or pinnacle.) Sadly, those games are more acutely remembered for the killing of eleven Israeli athletes and their coach by Palestinian militants. (This event would become the subject of a 2005 Steven Spielberg film, simply entitled Munich, which I confess I have yet to see.)

Onkel Rudi and I were enjoying a few rounds of Watten, a regional card game with suits of hearts, grass, shells, and acorns. Rather than money or plastic chips, we played for Hirnbatzen. Literally, “brain kiss,” a Hirnbatzen was what the loser of each round received – a hard flick on the forehead with the winner’s middle finger. And, boy, could Onkel Rudi deliver a brutal Hirnbatzen. The thwack of his thick finger against my brow could sometimes be heard from across the room by Tante Elfie, causing her to cringe. [I capitalize the word Hirnbatzen because it’s a noun, and all nouns in German are capitalized. I know that might seem odd, but as I used to tell my students, it makes them pretty easy to spot in a sentence.]

Only in his early 50s, Onkel Rudi (people rarely called him Rudolf) had survived a number of heart attacks. To help prevent the next one, he took a strict regimen of pills and long daily walks. (He even took nitroglycerin tablets, which I didn’t know was a thing until then. I sometimes wondered if they would explode if I threw them up against a wall. I never tried it though.) I joined him on those walks throughout the summer of my visit, and they always managed to produce sufficient fatigue in my scrawny twelve-year-old frame to induce a solid night’s sleep. We sometimes made the nearly two hour trek on foot into downtown to meet Tante Elfie for lunch. She worked for an insurance company called DBV, which stood for Deutsche Beamtenversicherung Lebensversicherung (German Civil Servants Insurance and Life Insurance). Try saying that three times fast.

Rudi Stärkl, the younger brother of my father’s mother (in other words, my dad’s uncle), did not have the appearance of one in frail health. Tall, slender, and ruggedly handsome, he had the look of an old-school movie star (like his namesake with the surname Valentino). [The two funny dots over the “a” in his last name are called umlauts. They simply render the sound of the “a” as a long vowel.] Between his neatly parted hair and well groomed mustache sat a pair of eyes that glinted with a youthful mischievousness that would often manifest itself in a variety of ways. The apartment building stood right at the edge of a lake, and there was a beach directly below. Sometimes while watering the plants on the balcony, he would spray water over the railing and then quickly duck out of view, peering just over the edge to observe the reactions of unsuspecting sunbathers.

The only visible sign of anything physically faulty with Onkel Rudi was a long scar down the length of his left bicep where the primary vein had been surgically removed and used as a replacement for one of the vessels leading into his weakened heart. But that obviously had no impact on the strength of his fingers. Still, I would have endured a dozen Hirnbatzen over what Tante Elfie had in store for us. (This is a gross exaggeration, as a dozen Hirnbatzen would likely have produced a dent in my skull.) [“Gross,” by the way, is one of countless English words of German origin. It literally means “big.”]

Since my arrival in Germany at the beginning of July, Tante Elfie had been eagerly anticipating the royal wedding of Britain’s Prince Charles to a beautiful young blonde commoner named Diana. Onkel Rudi and I knew that watching the event on TV was going to be an inescapable reality. When Tante Elfie wanted to watch something, she was not going to watch it by herself. On Thursday evenings, she made us watch Dallas, one of a few American shows that was televised on one of the three or four channels available back then. I laughed out loud the first time I heard the dubbed German voice coming from the mouth of J.R. Ewing with his three-piece tailored suit and ten-gallon cowboy hat. I could never quite understand what appeal the show had with German audiences. (I could barely understand what appeal the show had with American audiences.) But one good thing about German TV back then was that, fairly regularly, a shampoo or soap commercial would feature a topless model in the shower, her ample bosom covered only by a thin veil of foamy suds. (Hey, for a 12-year-old American kid, something like that was pretty tantalizing.)

This was my second visit to Munich, the first having been two summers prior. Onkel Rudi and Tante Elfie had come to America in the spring to visit my grandmother who had left Germany shortly after the end of the war. To my surprise, they asked my parents whether I might care to spend my summer vacation with them. I felt like quite the little big shot boarding the plane all by myself while most of my friends were just hanging out back in New Jersey, maybe going away to camp at best. My two kid sisters had their turn the following summer, and now I was enjoying my return visit. There would be others to come. But it wouldn’t be until many years later that I would come to appreciate what a unique and undeserved opportunity I had been afforded.

So there we sat, the three of us, watching this historical wedding on the small television in the cozy sitting area of the little apartment on the twelfth floor. There was certainly all the fanfare one would expect, but my most vivid memory was the train of young Diana’s gown and the number of attendants required to carry the absurdly long thing. Something else I’ll never forget is how the nervous virgin bride misspoke the groom’s name. All she had to do was repeat after the Archbishop of Canterbury, “I, Diana Spencer, take thee, Charles Philip Arthur George….” But what she uttered in a soft quavering voice was, “I take thee, Phillip Charles George Arthur…” (or some such erroneous combination. In fairness, something like that is bound to happen when too many names are involved.) Onkel Rudi and I burst out laughing. Tante Elfie appeared mortified and chided us, but a wry smile betrayed her own suppressed amusement. Beneath her regal exterior, Tante Elfie really did have a delightful sense of humor. She was quite an accomplished knitter, and she played a pretty mean accordion as well.

As a kid, I never quite understood what was meant by the expression “handsome woman.” But I recently saw it defined as “a woman with the kind of refined beauty and attractiveness that requires poise, dignity, and strength of mind and character, things that often come with age” (Urban Dictionary). Yes, I’d say that described Tante Elfie to a tee. She was a tall, stout woman with a Germanic ruggedness, and buxomness accentuated by her impeccable posture. There was a certain haggardness in the face, typical (I supposed) of those who had lived through war and its aftermath. (Her heavy smoking and love for sweet and fatty foods probably didn’t help much.) She was always pristinely dressed and groomed, and kept her hair colored a shade that was nearly jet black. When she and Onkel Rudi came to visit us in New Jersey, we’d get a kick out of the way she would wear a fine silk blouse even while preparing a meal in the kitchen. She was absolutely appalled by Americans who wore sweatpants and raggedy attire in public. (And that was in the ‘80s. I can only imagine how she would react to things today.)

One of the highlights of this particular summer was to be a drive to Berlin. For those who don’t know much about the history of this city, I encourage a bit of self education, but here’s my admittedly overly simplified lesson…

Following Germany’s surrender in 1945, the country was divided into four zones, one under the jurisdiction of each of the Allies – America, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, the latter having control of the easternmost portion. [The Soviet Union was the name of the nation that consisted of Russia and several neighboring countries under its control.] In like manner, the capital city of Berlin, within the Soviet-controlled eastern zone, was also divided into four zones. (Confused yet?) In 1949, Germany officially split into the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). [The name of the latter was somewhat ironic since it was neither democratic nor a republic. But, hey, is Great Britain really all that great, or the United States really all that united?]

Well, many of the folks living in East Germany, the government of which was a puppet of the Soviets, didn’t much like living under a communist regime, so they headed to the West. In fact, they left in droves and that didn’t sit too well with those in authority. After all, you can’t really have a country when there’s no people in it. You kind of need engineers, doctors, teachers, laborers, and human beings to fill all those other roles that keep a society functioning. Contrary to the oft held belief that humans are a drain on natural resources, people actually are a natural resource. (Countries contracepting themselves out of existence, like Japan for instance, often come to this realization only after it’s too late.) If people are the bloodline of any civilization, then East Germany was bleeding out. And the solution to this was a concrete tourniquet. Virtually overnight, the government erected a wall, not to keep invaders out, but to keep their own people in, something that is almost as hard for me to comprehend now as it was then.

When the infamous wall went up, friends were separated and families divided. Tante Elfie’s sister, who had been living in East Berlin, went from being a resident to a captive. Like all the East German inhabitants, she was not allowed to leave, even to visit family on the other side. (Over the years, many tried unsuccessfully to escape to the West. By “unsuccessful,” I mean that they were killed in the attempt. There are incredible stories of the methods by which people tried to escape – methods that included tunnels, cars fortified into armored battering rams, catapults, and even a successful liberation by means of a homemade hot air balloon.) It was difficult for me to fathom the idea of being forcibly separated from loved ones. I mean, sure, my own kid sisters drove me nuts sometimes but, geez, I still loved them. It was, however, permissible for those in the West to apply for a pass to cross over into the East, and that’s what we set out to do the day after a royal wedding in England.

This was to be my first visit to Germany’s largest city and, with a six-hour drive time, my farthest sojourn outside of Munich. (The three-hour drive to Kastelruth in the Dolomites of northern Italy had been my farthest up to that point. One day I will write a story about that enchanted village. Its timeless charm and serenity were certainly worth the car sickness I suffered on the winding mountain road leading up to it.)

I admit my memory of the drive to Berlin is not very vivid or detailed. It’s quite possible that I slept most of the way, very likely with my Sony Walkman? headphones covering my ears. (I was digging the latest cassette by The Police – Ghost In The Machine, an expression whose meaning I did not quite comprehend at the time. But even to my 12-year-old mind, the idea that we are all “spirits in the material world” appealed to some mystical vibe I sought to exude.)

For all the tales of exhilaration and terror related to driving on the Autobahn, I have to say the experience was relatively uneventful. I do recall Onkel Rudi cruising along in the left lane at about 180 kilometers (just a bit over 110 miles) an hour, when a beautifully streamlined Porsche appeared behind us suddenly, its lights rapidly flashing. Onkel Rudi obligingly shifted the Opel over to the right and the Porsche sped past us and out of sight as if we’d been standing still.

The one thing that does stand out from that trip was a minor mishap at a roadside rest area where we stopped to get gas. Onkel Rudi, who had been studying “the Queen’s English,” referred to it as “petrol.” There were lots of British expressions he would use that caused me some initial confusion. For example, the first time he told me to wait for him by “the lift” (elevator), or that we needed to be getting back to “the flat” (apartment), or the time he instructed me to go to the corner market to “fetch” the morning paper. (I dutifully returned to the flat carrying the paper in my mouth.)

At the rest stop, we had ourselves a little picnic (what the Germans call “Brotzeit” – literally, “bread time”). Tante Elfie had, in true regal German aunt fashion, packed an actual wicker picnic basket with sandwiches, boiled eggs, pickles, chocolates and other assorted sweets, and two thermoses of coffee – the extra strong stuff for her, and decaffeinated for Onkel Rudi and me. Onkel Rudi couldn’t do caffeine on account of his heart, and I was told that it would stunt my growth – another one of those pearls of wisdom about which I was somewhat dubious. The sandwiches were delicious, though like everything else, just a bit different from what I was accustomed to back home. For one thing, the bread in Germany is far more substantial than what we Americans typically consume. Tante Elfie would often refer to American bread (Wonder, et al) as “Luftbrot” – literally, “air bread.” (In similar fashion, my German relatives referred to American beer as “Bieselnwasser” – “piss water.”) The contents of the sandwiches were also different. Peanut butter and jelly was not a thing in Germany. (I don’t recall ever seeing peanut butter in Germany back then, although Nutella, a delightful hazelnut and chocolate spread, was a household staple. And there were always at least three or four marmalade options at the breakfast table, but not for making lunchtime sandwiches.) Ham and cheese was an option, but there were a dozen varieties of each of those from which to choose. My personal favorite was blood & tongue, a cold cut that, as the name suggests, consists of congealed beef blood and tongue. (I realize that sounds repulsive to the average American, but is it really any nastier than the other parts of the animal?) In elementary school, I would sometimes have a blood & tongue sandwich in my brown paper bag, and that always caused quite a stir at the lunch table.

After lunch, Tante Elfie enjoyed a cigarette while Onkel Rudi stretched his legs, and I found my way to the public restroom. As a kid, I hated using urinals. (I still dislike them, as there just seems something punitive about standing against a wall.) The one in this particular restroom was especially off-putting – just a single long basin along one wall. There must have been thirty men lined up in front of it, like cattle at a trough, so I opted to go into one of the stalls. I did my thing and went to exit the stall, but discovered something was wrong with the latch. I fidgeted with the thing every which way possible, but I just couldn’t get the door to open. I thought about crawling under the door, which in retrospect would have been rather nasty, but the clearance between the floor and European stall door was hardly adequate, even for my slender frame. And it was too high to climb over, even if I’d been brave enough to stand atop the toilet. I thought to call out for help, but I couldn’t remember the German word (“Hilfe!”) and was too embarrassed to call out in English. So I just stood in there in resigned silence.

Finally, after what felt like half an hour, the door opened and there stood Onkel Rudi looking rather irritated. “Boy, where have you been? We’re ready to leave for a long time!” The only other time I’d seen Onkel Rudi looking that annoyed was my first summer in Munich. They had a little Dachshund named Anka (short for Bianka – who knew dogs could have nicknames?), and we were walking with her somewhere in the Austrian Alps. Onkel Rudi had brought an old tennis ball that Anka loved to chase, and he would throw it short distances to keep her entertained. Well, for some reason I got it in my head to throw the ball down the side of the mountain. And Anka, without hesitation, chased it all the way down. It took the poor creature with her short little legs over half an hour to make it back up to us on the trail. She was panting so hard that Onkel Rudi had to carry her the rest of the way back to the car. So many years later, I can still hear his raised voice, “Junge, du bist ein Depp!” (“Boy, you are an idiot!”)

“I’m sorry, Onkel Rudi, but, look! The latch is broken!” Now, to this day, as with so many other things from my childhood memories, I couldn’t say for certain whether that latch was really broken, or if I just couldn’t figure out how to work it. I’m fairly certain it was the former, but Onkel Rudi still swears the latter. One thing I do know is that, the older I get, the more I cherish memories and the less I trust them.

So we climbed back into the Opel and continued northeast to the city limits of what had been the capital of a pre-divided Germany. I perhaps should have mentioned that, at the northern border of Bavaria (roughly halfway to Berlin), at some point after our rest stop, we had already crossed the border into East Germany. That crossing must have been uneventful, for I really can’t say I even remember it. I may have been asleep, and it’s quite possible that those traveling directly to West Berlin may not have been required to stop and exit their vehicles. Bear in mind that, geographically, West Berlin was a little island of democracy within the communist sea of East Germany. [If I’m mistaken about the border crossing procedure, I’m certain someone will correct me.]

While East Berlin was the capital of East Germany, the city of Bonn in the far west had been designated the provisional capital of West Germany in 1949. (Bonn is a city I still have yet to visit.) West Berlin was impressive, though it was nothing like New York, the city of my birth and urban jungle most familiar to me. There were no giant skyscrapers nor the sheer volume of people and noise as in Manhattan, but it was a city nonetheless. I looked out the window and took in the sights. There was certainly a cosmopolitan vibe. There were cars of every make and model, though everything more compact than back in the U.S. There were department stores and giant billboards advertising things both familiar (like Coca Cola and Panasonic) as well as not so familiar (like Allianz and SAP). A movie theater marquee displayed the latest hit film out of America – Jäger des Verlorenen Schatzes (Raiders of the Lost Ark). (We had actually taken Onkel Rudi and Tante Elfie to see that the previous month back in New Jersey. We figured it would be a fun action adventure film they could enjoy even without understanding all the English. What we neglected to consider, however, was that the bad guys in the film were Nazis. Oops.)

In keeping with German efficiency and frugality, our hotel was clean, conveniently located, and otherwise quite unextraordinary. We walked around for quite a spell that first evening, taking in the sights and sounds of downtown. It was bustling and vibrant, with considerably more noticeable American influence than in Munich. As we rounded a corner from Rudi-Dutschke-Straße (I was teasing Onkel Rudi about the street name) onto Friedrichstraße, my eyes grew wide as I spied a pair of familiar golden arches. [You can probably tell from context that “Straße” is the German word for “street.” And, no, the funny looking “ß” character is not a capital “b.” It’s called an “Eszett,” and it’s pronounced like a double “s.” My students would sometimes ask me the difference in pronunciation between a single and a double “s.” I was unable to supply a satisfactory answer.]

Tante Elfie protested initially, but surprisingly agreed that we could have our Abendessen (evening meal) at McDonalds?. As an (only somewhat slightly) wiser adult, I can say today that eating at McDonalds when abroad should be considered a venial sin. (Hell, eating at McDonalds in America is bad enough.) But as a kid who had eaten nothing but healthy food consisting of natural ingredients for roughly a month (oh, the horror!), I was just jonesing for something soft and greasy on a sesame seed bun (or any like variety of Luftbrot). My most vivid memory of that “meal,” aside from how delectable all that saturated fat and sodium tasted, was watching Onkel Rudi wash down his Big Mac? with a beer (a prime example of corporate cultural adaptation), and the sight of Tante Elfie delicately carving up her burger with a plastic fork and knife.

After consuming what likely took several minutes off our life expectancies, we strolled along the Kaiserdamm Boulevard (named after Kaiser Wilhelm II) to the site of a metallic vessel monument that housed an “eternal flame,” burning in tribute to Germanic peoples expelled from eastern Europe during and after World War II. For some reason, of which I am to this day unsure, I mistakenly thought it was a memorial honoring former American president, John F. Kennedy. I feel like Onkel Rudi had told me that, though I’m not sure why he would have, unless he had also been mistaken. (Perhaps I’d been thinking about the similar eternal flame at Kennedy’s gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery, and I simply got my fact circuits crossed.) I knew about the Kennedy visit to Berlin in 1963, just months before his death, during which he delivered his famous, “Ich bin ein Berliner!” speech. (Turns out that a “Berliner” also happens to be a popular marmalade-filled pastry, so it’s possible that Kennedy’s words could have been understood by the city’s inhabitants as, “I am a jelly donut!”)

Kennedy had actually been one of my childhood heroes. Maybe it was the whole cult of personality thing combined with the fact that he had been the only Catholic president up to that point. (Another guy many years later would become the second Catholic U.S. president, though only nominally so.) I even had a framed print of the Kennedy portrait by Norman Rockwell hanging on my bedroom wall. Looking back, it’s funny to think that I actually entertained aspirations of one day becoming a politician. (I also recall that the ambition had little to do with serving and everything to do with being served. I’m not sure whether that says more about me or American politics in general.)

I would come to understand years later that Kennedy actually did a great disservice to American Catholics. While campaigning, he gave a speech before a group of Protestant ministers, many of whom were concerned that his role as leader of the free world would be influenced by his Catholicism. Rather than defend the one true faith, he instead pandered to the audience by claiming that his private religious views would be kept cleanly cleaved from his public life, thereby giving American Catholics from that day forth a reassurance in the false belief that such a thing could actually be possible. [Specifically, in that speech he declared, “I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation, or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition of holding that office.” Ironically, he may have failed to recognize that the very position he was professing had been imposed upon him by the nation as a condition of holding that office.]

“Our so-called leaders speak; with words they try to jail ya. They subjugate the meek, but it’s the rhetoric of failure…”

Then of course there was The Wall itself, what the Germans referred to as Die Mauer. [“Die” is one of three German definite articles, words meaning “the,” and is pronounced “dee.” As I used to tell my students, “Never say ‘die’ in German, as no such word exists, at least not phonetically.] As we strolled along Bernauer Straße, I marveled at this concrete monstrosity that snaked through the city as far as the eye could see. This was not merely a barrier that separated two sovereign nations but, rather, one that hewed a neighborhood in two. The common architecture on either side plainly told the story that this had once been a single community. Gazing upon the thing was somehow jarring to the senses, because the rational mind perceived that it was clearly something that didn’t belong. It was a bit like the slightly uncomfortable feeling I got when I looked at the scar that ran down the length of Onkel Rudi’s arm. In that instance, it was a natural revulsion owing to the absence of a natural thing. With The Wall, it was a natural revulsion owing to something unnatural that had been imposed.

Every inch of The Wall on its West side was covered with graffiti. The East side, I would soon see for myself, was pristine. There was a certain irony that the “good guy” side was defiled and unsightly, while the “bad guy” side was characterized by order and cleanliness. While I experienced a certain visceral response in the close proximity of this infamous landmark, it wouldn’t be until many years later that I’d become far more informed about its history and all the events leading up to its initial slipshod construction and evolution over time into the more complex multi-layered barrier it had become. (I owe this increase in wisdom to the many years of teaching my students about The Wall. The surest way to become knowledgeable about something is to find oneself in the situation of having to teach it.)

I must certainly say that I never imagined I’d live to see the day that The Wall would fall. It simply appeared so fixed, both in space and history, as to have claimed a status of permanence. (That said, I had thought the same thing about two imposing towers in lower Manhattan.) Furthermore, even my wildest dreams could not have conjured the image of David Hasselhoff elevated by a crane above The Wall on the night it came down. I can still picture him, donning a black leather jacket adorned with glowing light bulbs, as he sang before the masses and international television cameras, “I’ve been looking for freedom…I’ve been looking so long…I’ve been looking for freedom….Still the search goes on!” [If you want to see something pathetic and hysterical, do a search on YouTube! for “Hasselhoff on Berlin Wall.”] I recall watching that surreal performance and fearing it might prompt people to start putting The Wall back together. (Apparently there are Germans today who believe that Hasselhoff was somehow instrumental in helping bring about The Wall’s demise.)

The next morning, we got up early to make the crossing to the East. Normally, Americans would go through what was known as Checkpoint Charlie. Other than the catchy alliteration, I wasn’t sure why it was called that. [I now know that it was so named because it was the third checkpoint opened by the Allies, and “Charlie” comes third in the NATO phonetic alphabet – Alpha, Bravo, Charlie…] But since I was accompanied by my relatives, we all went through a crossing designated for West Germans. (I don’t recall whether it was Alpha or Bravo.) I always felt safe with Onkel Rudi and Tante Elfie, but I admit the experience was more than a little scary. It was a world before 9/11, so as an American I had never experienced security checkpoints with soldiers wielding automatic weapons and tethered German shepherds. We had to step out of the Opal while the guards inspected it inside and out, checking the trunk, behind the seats, underneath the car with mirrors attached to long poles, even the gas tank. We were allowed to bring in certain gift items including food. (I believe Tante Elfie had baked an apple cake for the visit.) Most print materials, namely books, newspapers, and magazines, were not permitted.

One of the guards took my backpack and proceeded to go through its contents. I didn’t have much since I knew we wouldn’t be staying overnight, but two items did get some attention. The first was my Walkman, which still housed the Police cassette. (I thought it somewhat ironic that The Police were now being examined by the police.) I could hear in my head the high tubular voice of Sting, so smooth and distinct – “There is no political solution to our troubled evolution. Have no faith in constitution. There is no bloody revolution…”

“I’m afraid you can’t bring this with you.” I was surprised that the soldier spoke to me in English. “Don’t worry. We keep it here for you, ja? You claim when you come back through.” He continued rifling through my bag and next pulled out my journal. It was a basic composition book that one of my aunts back home had nicely decorated by making a cover for it from a map of Europe. At the end of each day, I recorded all the things I had done along with various thoughts and commentary. The guard began to leaf through the pages. I never wrote anything too personal, so I wasn’t especially concerned. I wondered if he could read English, though he seemed to speak it well enough. He glanced at me, then back down at the journal. “It’s diary?”

“Well, not exactly,” I answered, “Just a journal.” (For some reason, I had it in my head that girls kept “diaries” while guys kept “journals.”)

Onkel Rudi was standing by the driver door of the Opel, shaking his head as if to say, “You Dummkopf, why couldn’t you just leave those things back at the hotel?”

“We keep it here with your music. You can collect on your way out.” I was a bit perplexed as to the necessity of blocking my journal from entering communist territory, but I certainly wasn’t about to argue with the fellow with the machine gun and German shepherd. (The only checkpoint crossing in my life that would ever be as eventful was the time I was stopped by airport security at Newark for having a gun shaped cigarette lighter in my carry on. That was pretty dumb. I’ll perhaps talk about that in another story.) For one brief moment, the soldier’s eyes met mine. Behind the all-business exterior was something human and familiar. His expression almost seemed to say, “Sorry, kid, I’m just doing my job – one that I don’t even like.” (I could be wrong about this. Like I said, my memories are more cherished than trustworthy.)

Once the dangerous contraband of British pop music and a pre-teen’s journal had been sufficiently secured, we at last cleared the checkpoint and drove into another world. It may have been an abrupt and coincidental change in the weather as we entered the East, but everything seemed to suddenly turn overcast and gray, like being transported from Technicolor Oz back into black and white Kansas. In some ways, the setting was not so strange. People walked about on the streets, though no one seemed to be merely strolling. Everyone’s gait was marked with purpose. There were no signs of tourists, no music emanating from cars or street performers, no idle conversation on sidewalk cafes, no quirkily decorated storefronts. In short, everything appeared “functional,” minus the “fun.”

We reached the apartment where Tante Elfie’s sister lived with her son, along with his wife and their four-year-old daughter. The little girl had a golf ball sized lump on her forehead that I at first assumed was some sort of birth defect. (I reasoned that the child was too young to be playing card games for Hirnbatzen.) But it turned out to be the result of a collision with a table corner the previous day. It was hard to look at, though I was assured she’d be fine. Other than that, she was an adorable little girl. I spent more time speaking with her than with the adults, which rather made sense since my German vocabulary at the time was probably not much greater than that of a toddler.

Though Tante Elfie’s sister was the elder by three years, the two of them could have passed for twins. Even their speech and physical mannerisms were uncannily similar. (You’ll have to forgive the fact that I embarrassingly cannot recall the name of Tante Elfie’s sister nor the other relatives we visited that day. (I think the man may have been Klaus.) I don’t believe I even bothered to record those in my journal. I could have simply made up names, but that would almost seem a greater infraction. (This is a good example of how I often pay inordinate attention to lesser details while neglecting ones of greater import. I mean, geez, I don’t remember the name of my Tante Elfie’s sister, yet I can recall all the names of the former Prince of Wales.) The one noticeable difference between the sisters was their hair. Tante Elfie’s was colored raven black, while her sister’s was an almost dazzling natural white. Things like hair dye were not easily accessible in the East and likely would have been considered a symbol of Western vanity and decadence.

Tante Elfie had once shared with me a plan she had devised to liberate her sister from the East. The only problem was that the crux of the plan would require the two of them to switch places. Because of their similar appearance, Tante Elfie figured all she’d need to do was sneak some hair dye into the East, or else come up with some other option to darken her sister’s hair. But even assuming they could pull it off, each of them would then be separated from their respective families. In any event, Tante Elfie was never able to ask her sister’s thoughts on such a plan, as all phone calls and written correspondence were closely monitored by the East German Ministry of State Security (Staatsicherheit, aka the Stasi). Even the homes of citizens were often bugged.

The family’s apartment was sparse. There was no television or stereo system, and certainly no Atari 2600?. (Back in New Jersey, we didn’t have Atari either, though we did have a Pong? console. I had to go to a friend’s house to get my fix of Space Invaders? and Asteroids?.) Aside from the small bathroom, the apartment was basically just one big room. It was explained to me that materials for things like interior walls had to be purchased by the tenants, and there was often a waiting list for such things. I listened to the adults talk but could only catch bits and pieces of what they were saying. There was an explanation of who I was and how I had come to be there. Our hosts were certainly polite, though I perceived a general sort of malaise in their countenance that seemed to match the grayness outside.

We walked around the neighborhood and had a simple lunch of sausages and potatoes at a nearby eatery. Onkel Rudi took care of the bill with East German marks he had acquired before we crossed over. There were far fewer cars on the streets than in the West, and they were all the same sort of box-shaped thing, an East German car called the Trabant (otherwise known as the “Trabi”). They were pieces of crap but generally the only vehicle available to citizens (except for government officials). My relatives didn’t own one though they were on a waiting list to get one. Some people waited for years. It seemed there were a lot of waiting lists in the East, even waiting lists to get onto other waiting lists.

As we walked around after lunch, I spied a tall man with a crew cut and wearing a trench coat on the corner. I was sure I had seen him earlier as we exited my relatives’ apartment building. With my 12-year-old imagination, I pretended that he was a Stasi agent who had been assigned to keep an eye on our party, particularly since there was a suspicious journal-keeping American among them. Of course this was silly, but it was fun to fantasize about such things. Many years later, I would see a German film called Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) that depicted the exhaustive ways the East German government spied on and kept tabs of its own citizens. (I viewed the film several times with my students over the years.) Looking back, I realize my fantasy about the man in the trench coat may not have been a product of my imagination after all. [The Lives of Others won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006. It’s an excellent movie and I highly recommend it.]

We continued our stroll and saw a long line of people along one of the sidewalks. The line ended at the entrance of some storefront. I asked Onkel Rudi what they were doing.

“They’re waiting to buy Klopapier.” I knew that Klopapier was the word for toilet paper.

“Toilet paper?” I thought to myself. The idea of having to wait in line for such an everyday item was unfathomable to me. Even Herr Sommer, the farmer we visited in the Bavarian countryside earlier that summer, had toilet paper in his outhouse. I suddenly felt very grateful to come from a capitalist country where such a thing as toilet paper could never be in short supply. (Well, at least barring the impact of certain viruses.) As we walked past the line of people, sluggishly shuffling forward, I noticed that they all wore an identical expression – one I can only best describe as one of sorrowful longing.

As dusk approached, we had to say our good-byes. When we reached the checkpoint to reenter the West, I recognized the same guard who had held my belongings that morning. He came out of a small office, and was carrying a metal bin containing my Walkman and journal. He handed them to me and said, “Du schreibst gut.” (“You write good.” One would say “well” in English, but in German the adjective and adverb forms are one in the same.) I realized from his comment that he must have read my journal, or at least some portion of it. I wasn’t sure whether I should be annoyed that my privacy had been invaded, or flattered that someone cared enough to read something I had written.

“Danke,” I offered, and took my belongings. He looked at me, and gave a nod with something that was very close to a smile.

We went back to our hotel, where Tante Elfie was uncharacteristically quiet. I knew the feeling of being homesick, so I could appreciate at least on some level the sadness of being separated from one’s own family.

The next morning, before the journey back to Munich, we stopped at one of the department stores to do some souvenir shopping. I found some little Berlin snow globes (none of which seemed to contain representations of The Wall), and a Berlin patch for my jacket. (I had collected patches of all the places we visited that summer, and Tantie Elfie sewed them onto my jacket. I think I may still have the thing somewhere.) Tante Elfie went off to look at whatever it is women look at when they find themselves in a department store, while Onkel Rudi and I sat down on a small sofa to wait for her. He fidgeted with his little handheld electronic English dictionary, as I pushed the play button on my Walkman…

“Where does the answer lie, living from day to day? If it’s something we can’t buy, there must be another way…”

As I surveyed the scene, I noticed a long line of ladies in front of one of the counters. I removed my headphones and asked Onkel Rudi, “What are they waiting for?”

“There is some new designer handbag…” He quickly consulted his dictionary. “…promotion.” I looked down at my own little “man purse” that Tante Elfie had given me before our trip. It bore the letters DBV, the name of her insurance company employer. The purse was actually a very practical thing to carry, as it made more sense than having all your belongings stuffed into your pants pockets. (I was, however, most careful not to be seen with it by my friends upon my arrival back home.)

As I stared at the line of women, I noticed they all seemed to wear an expression that was very familiar – one I could only describe as an expression of sorrowful longing.

[I want to thank my German second cousin, David (that’s “dah-veed,” not “day-vid”) for supplying me with the name of Tante Elfie’s sister – Margit. I pray those two sisters are, or will one day be, on the same side – the right side – of that eternal wall.]

If you'd like to hear a song I recorded in conjuction with this article, here's the link...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP6AWgdQQfI&list=RDjP6AWgdQQfI&start_radio=1