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From the other side of the wall

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Steve Otto

sotto@tampatrib.com sotto@tampatrib.com

Published: November 11, 2009

Updated: 11/11/2009 12:11 am

We were lost, which you might not think is easy when you are downtown in a city with more than a million people.

But this was before everyone had a GPS or a cell phone. In fact, all we had was a brochure with a small map that you couldn't read very well. It was getting dark, and the rainy mist was turning to snow. And we were stuck behind "The Wall."

The three of us had flown into West Berlin a few days after Christmas on a military hop, figuring it might be an interesting place to spend a New Year's leave from an air base in West Germany.

It was. West Berlin was a postwar miracle, a new city built on the rubble of World War II while at the same time isolated inside Russian-controlled East Germany. There were broad boulevards and sophisticated shops. There was a transportation system of streetcars and rail that would send the Hillsborough County commission into delirious spasms of envy. There were museums and a great nightclub called the Resi that had lighted phones on each table, a pneumatic tube to send messages to people at other tables and a lighted, musical water show.

'The Wall'

We meandered around for a day and then, rounding a corner and entering a huge plaza, we came to The Berlin Wall. In the late '60s, it was the visible symbol of the Cold War.

You could climb a platform and peer into the distance and see that the wall was actually a series of barriers. Beyond the wall were open spaces. There were armed sentries in towers, and more barricades beyond. Whatever buildings had been in the way had been torn down to prevent East Germans from getting anywhere near the wall.

Still, they tried, individually and in groups. They dug tunnels and crashed through in cars. They tried floating over the wall in balloons and gliders or just making a run for it in the dark. Most of them didn't make it.

Into the East

The next day the three of us took the bus through the crossing called Checkpoint Charlie, through a winding series of barricades, and went on the standard tour.

East Berlin, unlike the West, appeared almost deserted. There were no lights. There was still rubble piled up in some corners, left over from a war a quarter of a century earlier.

Even in uniform the three of us felt nervous meandering around on our own. Protocol said that we could not talk to the East German police if stopped because we didn't recognize the government as legitimate. We were supposed to talk only to Russian police.

And we were lost. We found the wall, but it was not near the checkpoint.

All we could see was above the wall, 100 yards in the distance, where the great lights of West Berlin and the sounds of traffic and life must have been a constant grating on the guards trying to keep their citizens prisoners. Eventually we found our way back, almost feeling guilty about the people who only could watch us from a distance.

This week, divided Berlin is a fading memory as we celebrate the crumbling of the wall and the end of a not-always-cold war.

Keyword: Otto Graphs, for more of Steve Otto's musings.

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