Time travel – Wanderlust woman crossing two worlds over the Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and I thought it was the perfect time to hop a weekend flight from London to explore the light and dark side of this controversial German city.  The Wall had served as a physical barrier dividng this city into the light and dark of German life since 1961.  When the barrier was finally opened, it shed light on the bleak and dismal conditions in the east compared to the raucous (often bawdy by western standards) life in the west.

Generations chipping away at history

As a reporter, I thought the perfect time to visit would be the eve of the first free elections in Berlin in nearly three decades.  So I packed my carry-on weekender with clothing and broadcast equipment.  I figured it would be a working weekend and I could therefore write-off the cost of the journey (freelancers have to plan ahead).  However, upon arriving at Heathrow, the exact same carry-on I had just used from NY to London days earlier was suddenly not acceptable for the journey from Heathrow to Berlin and British Airways took it from me right on the jet-way.  Right away, I knew that suitcase would not make it with me because we had a stopover in Hamburg (land of The Early Beatles).  I landed in Berlin but my suitcase made a stopover in Hamburg – there goes the equipment to cover the elections.

Fortunately, my wandering nomad, musician boyfriend at the time had insisted I stay at a five-star hotel so the staff at the Berlin Intercontinental could not have been more helpful.  Toothbrushes, toiletries, even clothing were offered to me…..and they spoke English (a rare thing back then). I could barely get my NY producer interested in the story with sound and without a tape recorder and phone hook-up, the story was dead and I was left to my own devices in a city where I didn’t speak the language.

West Berlin was not the seedy, wild place some people told me it would be.  It was actually quite reserved and I felt quite safe walking the streets at night.  The shock came during the day when my bus passed a park where dozens of women were sunbathing TOPLESS in the middle of the city.  That was the wildest thing I saw while in Berlin and I’m a New Yorker.  I spent the day exploring by walking the wall and watching so many Germans thoroughly excited to be able to venture to the “other side.”  I visited the bombed out Kaiser Wilhelm Church from World War II, which still stands in the center of Berlin, and the Berlin Zoo,

Berlin Zoo

which was my favorite place, a peaceful oasis in a very stark and lonely city.  However, what sticks in my memory all these years later is the servicemen – both German and American.

When I approached Checkpoint Charlie, the post which had stood watch at the wall for many years, an American GI called out to me because he saw the US Airforce patches I had sewn onto the pockets of my bomber jacket.  No matter where you are, no  matter the country, time of year or time of day, there is something so heartwarming about seeing an American GI.  It always gives me the warm and fuzzies because it’s always a friendly, familiar face, even when you have just met.  Yet, the German soldiers on the east side of the wall looked like lost sheep, almost frightened of their new position in life in light of the changes on the horizon.  There was no warm greeting from any of them.  Those whom I photographed looked with a blank gaze and as I walked through the streets of east Berlin they seemed to reflect the emptiness which must have imprisoned this city for decades.  I was alone and the streets were desolate.  There were monuments which towered over me and no one to admire them – the city, both east and west, was clearly a study in contrasts.