West Berlin

In 1989 I rode the duty train with covered windows across the East German countryside, forewarned not to look outside. I arrived in that island of freedom, which was surrounded by oppression, tyranny, and more tank divisions than NATO had in all their armies combined. Kids were hammering pieces off the Wall and giving them to tourists; I pocketed a few a boy gave me. Passing through Checkpoint Charlie, I saw my first live Russian soldiers, guarding their monuments from what they referred to as the Great Patriotic War. Their goosestep style of marching was slower than the Nazis from forty-five years before, but just as menacing in its precision--perhaps even more so, with that arrogant hesitation when their boots reached the highest point. Before seeing East Berlin, communism and socialism were just words with an uneasy threat implied....but afterwards The Wall had come down, But the Russians were still there. Lost in history.