In the autumn of 1982 Henri Flesh and I flew to Berlin. We booked rooms at the Hotel Kempenski for a three-day holiday from BSIR, Hamburg's most popular club, after working the entire summer. That night the French DJ and I went out to the Dschungel in Charlottesburg, where we ran into a pair of Christina F lookalikes. All the girls wanted to be the junkie teen refugee from the Zoo Station, who had become a star thanks to her bestselling book, THE DIARY OF CHRISTINE F. My girl's name was Chloe. The ex-ballerina from Koln was as blonde as Ilsa of the SS.
The next morning and gray and misty. We bid the girls auf-wiedersehen, giving them taxi fare and money for a breakfast. Henri and I strolled over to the Brandenburg Gate. The photo image of a Red Army soldier waving the Red Flag over its battered arch was burnt into my head. Concrete barriers barred any approach to the monument to national unity. Nina Hagen, a punk singer, had been granted deportation to avoid becoming a protest figure. This was not the Free World.
We strolled over to the graffitied Wall and climbed a scaffolding to view over the twelve-foot wall. The heavily-mined 'death strip' was a barren patch of dirt stretching right and left into the murk. Another wall barred any escapes along with an electrified fence. The Cold War was running strong on the front line and the two us smoked Gitanes on the way to get into East Berlin. A huff of Persian Brown helped pass the time and we arrived at Checkpoint Charlie in a nod.
The squat female border guard wasn't happy about letting us into the workers' paradise. We were enemies of the state in her eyes and those of the West as well. She stamped our pass light as ether. The Stasi or secret police had ways of dealing with our kind and two bland men followed us. Unlike the prosperity in West Berlin entire neighborhoods bore the scars of the Fall of Berlin. Bullet holes, shell holes, collapsed buildings, and empty blocks. In many ways East Berlin looked like the East Village.
We walked through the deserted city and crossed the River Spree to arrive at Karl-Marx Platz, where a thin concrete communication tower rose into the graying September sky showing off the achievment of the DDR.. The fog was so thick the radio spire was barely visible. The stomp of boots startled us and across the plaza a troop of armed Soviet soldier goose-stepped out of the mist.
"There's parking everywhere." Henri wished that we had my orange VW bug.
"Here comes a car." Henri pointed to where a small car whined down the street.
"Wooo, ein Trabant." We waved to the driver and Henri explained that East Germans waited for years to purchase one. It sounded like a lawn mower. The Stasi agents didn't appreciate our laughing.
We drank bier in a restaurant. The people at the tables avoided lifting their heads. They knew how to act around the Stasi.
One big glass cost twenty-five pfennigs. I had enough money for a hundred beers and bought a round for everyone in the restaurant. No one said thank you. No one touched the glasses. They stayed on the bar.
The Stasi approached the barman and spoke in low voices.
"They are no fun." Henri wasn't liking this day trip.
We left the restaurant and went shopping, except there was nothing to buy in the shops.
"Maybe we could score some drugs." Henri entered a pharmacy and exited in a huff. "They were only selling steroids. Last thing I want is to look like an East German female athlete."
The Communist competitor were three times the man I would ever be in real life.
"Us too." The girls acted out weighing weights.
The Stasi were no amused by our behavior. Two more followed us. Their message was clear
Heraus auslanders.
"Wir zuruckgehen nach Ost."
I had had enough of East Berlin.
"Communism is a failure." Henri liked his socialist France.
"Same as capitalism." I hated the consumerism of the West, where everyone's soul was for sale.
I wanted to go back to the hotel and nearing Checkpoint Charlie we gave our remaining East German DMs to a young boy. He looked at the Stasi agents and threw them on the ground, then ran down the street.
We passed through the Berlin Wall at the sunset. No one stopped us at the frontier. We were no threat to the DDR. The dyky border guard was still on duty. Helga had to love her job. Once more back in the American sector I waved down a taxi and told the driver to take us to the Kempinski.
He asked about East Berlin.
"It's a worker's paradise."
"Schiesse."
Even Henri knew the meaning of that word, but neither did I consider the west the Free world. I like Nina Hagen was a punk.
I doubted I would ever see East Berlin again and bid the half-city 'Niewiedersehen', although that night Chloe and I pretended we were spies and I loved lying in bed with her, whispering in my Boston-accented German, feeling oh so James Bond. Oh, 007.
