The train stopped at West Berlin’s Fredrichstrasse underground station. I stepped off into the slow queue for GDR border control. Presented my visa papers, answered a few questions and took the stairs into East Berlin. The Wall would stand for another decade. Deutsche Demokratische Republik, to give its correct name, wasn’t going anywhere. I was behind the Iron Curtain. On holiday in unfamiliar territory.
We were to meet outside the station entrance. An old school friend from Ballymena, now a resident of East Berlin and a presenter on local radio. I looked over the plaza, expecting to see him. A stream of small cars buzzed past, all looking similar. A few pulled in, but not the one I was looking for. It wasn’t busy; after West Berlin, it was quiet, unhurried, and a little colourless.
There he was. A bright yellow Fait 850 with a Belfast number plate. Bought in Ballymena, driven across Europe, and now in communist East Germany, David’s Joey had proven to be a reliable motor.
The apartment was on the first floor of a solid, modernist building. David shared its cavernous high-ceilinged rooms with six students. There was an air of bright independence, a questioning of politics and society layered with sharp humour. Most are Stasi informers, David told me. That was difficult to believe. Frank, whom I found most personable, was somewhat more direct than the others. He’s definitely Stasi. A party member.
A few mornings later, five of us took a train north to Rostock, to stay at a family holiday house belonging to one of the student’s. We were drinking those delicate Kölsch glasses of cold beer, accompanied by ice-cold vodka. Repeat, repeat and repeat as we sped through the flat landscape towards the Baltic. There were many calls of prost! but none to the downfall of the DDR.
Our troupe left the train station in search of a late lunch. It was Saturday and the restaurants were full. We eventually found a kneipe, a simple bar that served hearty food. The aromas that met us were of pork, of sausage and boiled vegetables. We sat at a large kitchen-like table and ordered drinks. Eric Honiker, ever present, watched from the wall. Frank genuflected as he passed him on his way to the toilet. We laughed. The other tables didn’t. The waiter deflected our drinks order with an arrogant sweep of his head. Maybe he had reason to, but it riled Frank. We waited for our food and were left dry. Frank felt this arrogance was a distortion of a great socialist principle that elevated those who served. Eventually, when he got the waiter’s attention, he gave out an excoriating political tirade. I knew little German, but the body language was easy to interpret.
We got our food, and more beer, with much tut-tutting from the surounding tables. It’s a kneipe for godsake was a rough translation of Frank’s comment. There were large knuckles of pork, long sausages, boiled vegtables and gravy; plates of food that justified a good day’s labour. Frank’s genuflecting in front of Eric became more of a deep bowing, the laughter became more muted. I found it incredulous that he could have anything to do with the secret police. But perhaps I shouldn’t have been given my roots.
Alexander Platz was enormous and modern in a 1960s way, exemplary GDR. Blue skies shone over the wide, tiled pedestrian plaza. People strolled, others taking shortcuts. During my first days, there appeared a drabness and restraint in everything and everyone, as if in a sepia print, flat shades of brown. And now, in the city’s central plaza, life here seemed muted. However, as days passed, I registered this less and less.
With a backdrop of the towering modernistic Fernsehtrum TV tower and squat white office blocks, we sat at the Fountain of Friendship. Around us other young people, most an ethnic mix of students from the communist-aligned states. No papers or cans littered the square. To my question, Is there much crime? there were glancing laughs and a shaking of heads. The Stasi state was everywhere amid the sepia tones; I just couldn’t discern it. A case of not being able to see the wood for the trees.
The greatest shock of the whole trip was on leaving. I remember it vividly as a physical assault. I exited the U-bhan station in West Berlin and was pinned to the spot by an assault of light, people, traffic, and noise, but mostly by a wall of tall neon advertising. I stood aside for a minute or two. Shocked. Waited for it to pass. Before moving towards an airport bus and my journey back to Derry.
End
The Curlew's Call 