Berlin

We have been watching the world track and field championships this week. I get such an enjoyment listening to these athletes; they are, for the most part, so well-spoken and it is a pleasure to listen to their interviews.

The meet is being held in Berlin, Germany. No longer East Berlin and West Berlin. Just...Berlin. Years ago, in October of 1989, I had the opportunity to travel to Berlin (at that time, both East and West). My companions and I, all flight crew flying a JFK-Frankfurt-Berlin trip, decided to cross over to East Berlin that evening for dinner. We wanted to see and experience the communist East Germany which we had heard so much about in our Land of the Free.

I had a professor in college who was from East Berlin. (One of my majors was German.) He would on rare occasion tell us a story from his childhood. They were never happy stories - he told of Russian soldiers knocking his father's teeth out with the butts of their rifles. Of his neighborhood having to slaughter and eat their horses because they were hungry. He, like most in his generation, had nothing good to say about his childhood. When he was a young adult, he had a job which permitted him travel between East and West Berlin on rare occasion. One day he took all the cash he had, put it into his briefcase, and boarded the train to West Berlin, where he claimed asylum. He left behind his parents without ever telling them his plans. In later years, after he became a citizen of the U.S.A., he did make a few trips back to his home in East Berlin, but, as he told us, never without fear. On his last trip to see his aging parents, the border guards at Checkpoint Charlie delayed him and questioned him to the point that he was afraid to ever return to East Berlin. That was such a sad story he told. He never went back.

On our evening at Checkpoint Charlie, I was the LOD for our crew - Language of Destination. That meant I was the person who spoke German for the others. This was generally a fun thing, and the perk was that I received $50 extra for any flight that I was LOD. Yippee! A tiny little payoff for all those high school and college hours I methodically studied vocabulary and grammar.

We entered Checkpoint Charlie with our passports, and the questions were pretty basic: Who are you, what do you do, why do you want to enter East Berlin, (...ummm..to have dinner?)...As they stared at my passport, they asked me twice to remove my glasses. (I guess I was wearing contacts in my passport photo.) I was given rigid instructions (or so I felt ) as to what time that evening we must return to Checkpoint Charlie and leave East Berlin.

I have been through a lot of Customs corridors, have experienced interviews and questioning, and rarely does such bother me. But I recall being a little ill at ease that evening at Checkpoint Charlie. This was, after all, guarded by armed guards - so that the East Berliners would not try to scale the Berlin Wall. Impossible nowadays to comprehend.

We ate dinner (I had a duckling dish), walked around a bit, and returned to Checkpoint by our curfew. I remember all the cars were tiny. Like those tiny Yugos which never made it (from Yugoslavia - do you remember those?) The buildings were grey, and square, and ugly. It was late autumn, and things in general were grey. People in the restaurant and on the street were unsmiling. It was an unusual visit.

Well. Three weeks later - WHO KNEW?! President Reagan had uttered his famous words, " Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" two years earlier. WHO KNEW that three weeks after my travel to East Berlin, they would tear down the wall, and East Berlin was no longer.

Now! Fast-forward to just a few years ago, and that Spouse o' Mine and I were traveling through Germany. We traveled from Cottbus up to Berlin, and then back towards the western part of Germany. The travel from Cottbus up north was grey, square, and the same - just like what I had seen in East Berlin years ago.

So now we are watching the world championships of track and field this week, in Berlin. Hmm. History is so interesting, and history is not at all kind. Hearken back to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, when Jesse Owens won 4 gold medals in track and field. Adolph Hitler was hoping to use the Olympics to to promote Nazi propoganda and Aryan racial superiority.

Thank God for Jesse Owens.

Germany. It has a long, long history, good and bad. As do so many countries and regions. I think - at least it is my wee opinion, that the recent (horrific) history of Germany prejudices most of us. Too bad. But it will be interesting for me to see what transpires in the next few centuries of Germany.

But, wait!

Uh-oh.