It was Christmas break 1973. I booked the cheapest fare from Stockholm, where I was a graduate student, to West Berlin, where my boyfriend would meet me and drive us back to West Germany and his home of Hirschau in Bavaria.
When the train met the North Sea, it went right onto a large ferry. I remember thinking that if we were going to sink, it would be fast. The next morning I was chugging through the countryside of East Germany watching the black coal soot gush out of the train’s engine. And then I arrived in East Berlin. The train came to a halt and I sat in my compartment—like the ones in the old black and white movies. And I sat. And I waited for the train to move. And then an East Berlin soldier with a rifle entered my compartment and yelled “RAUS”-“Get out” I left quickly. I had seen enough war movies to know that “RAUS” didn’t auger well.
I didn’t know that I was supposed to switch to a different train to cross over the border. It had left and I remained.
I had no visa to be in East Berlin, let alone East Germany. My only money was Swedish kroner. Armed, communist soldiers patrolled on the walkways above the station platform. This was way before cell phones. I had no idea how to contact my boyfriend.
I had been learning and trying to speak Swedish for four months and now I had to revert to a limited knowledge of German that was culled from watching television and trying to be polite to my boyfriend’s family. I started to cry.
From nowhere a young man approached, spoke English and guided me to the u-bahn. At the ticket booth I spoke loudly “Ich habe kein geld” (I have no money) and pushed my way through the barrier and onto the train. All the while I was thinking of Julie Andrews in “Torn Curtain.”
After passing through Checkpoint Charlie, the subway finally paused at the West Berlin station. The subway station and the train station were at the same locale. One under the other. There was my boyfriend. He had figured out what might have happened. I think that that was the moment that I knew we were not meant for each other. He saw me and shook his head in disgust like I was the dumbest person he knew.
The next day we went to the Berlin Wall. From a building that had been bricked up as part of the wall, I plucked a thick piece of glass that had once been part of a window. I still have it. At the time, I doubted I would ever live to see a re-united Germany. But I have. And now many people don’t even remember that Germany was divided.
