20 years ago

20 years ago, I was a senior at Bellarmine. Our lunchroom was divided by class, and the senior section had a TV in it - shitty and small, but a TV. I was a student of German, and a lover of history. There, on the TV, were images of Germans dancing atop The Wall. Most of my classmates didn't even notice, but I sat there with tears in my eyes. A beautiful thing had happened. The people had won; the government gave up. Yeah, freedom and america and all that: but as I look back, it was that for a while, the world got better.

The summer of 1990 (after graduation) I went on an exchange program to Bremen, Germany. 3 weeks in Bremen, at the end of their school; 1 week in Berlin. I was heading out on my own after that, but most people headed home. It was a World Cup summer, and lo and behold - Germany won! My host sister Ellen Baehre and I were at her friend's place in Bremen. Her dad came to get us, and on the way back, every intersection we went through was full of dancing Germans, pounding on cars, climbing up street lamps.

It was a good time to be alive and in Germany.

We left Bremen on the 11th of July and took the train to Berlin. One of the first things we did was to go to The Wall. Broken, but still formidable. Our teacher took us to a viewing stand near Checkpoint Charlie where you used to be able to look out over No Man's Land. Nearby were crosses and memorials to those who had died trying. The Wall was about 12 feet high, with rounded cement tops, so even if you could leap that high, you had nothing to grab onto. But by then, the guard towers were shattered. The viewpoint didn't matter any more. You could walk right out into No Man's Land. Flowers were growing; the ground was no longer tended. One of my classmates said they wished they could have seen The Wall "before." I replied that to have known it existed was enough; I was grateful to know it had come to an end. The oppression and repression - the malice - The Wall carried, even in its broken state, was too much. To have lived behind it would have been soul-killing. It was a life-changing moment.

Despite the horror of what The Wall had meant, it could not hold us. We returned The Wall, several times. The last time was two nights before we left. We took champagne with us (an act that surely would have gotten our teacher fired these days), food, cookies. We hung out in No Man's Land and we climbed the wall and we spray painted and we chipped away at The Wall. Leo drew a Bart Simpson saying, "Eat My Shorts, Commies!" I wrote a hello to my family and then more idealistically: "Peace to the World." I still have the cement chunks I collected from The Wall - no need to verify the authenticity, I collected them myself. Perhaps most sublime of all was Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, in the distance, rehearsing for the concert the next week - The Wall at the The Wall. "All in all it's just a-nother brick in the Wall."

The night before we parted ways, I snuck out at - I don't know, 4:30 a.m.? Some hour just as it was getting light I went off to The Wall by myself. Oh to be young and invincible! I went back to where we had partied, and Bart Simpson was gone. Perfectly square cut out. The words, "eat my shorts, commies!" remained, but Bart was gone. Because someone wanted it, or didn't want it? I'll never know.

Three years later, I returned with my parents. The Wall was largely dismantled and disappeared by then. You could find it in spots, if you knew where to go. I took my parents to Checkpoint Charlie, but had a hard time finding the memorials. They were there, but with no Wall to mark them, it was easy to walk past. No Man's Land had been paved. On one of the corners - in the eastern part - was a United Colors of Benneton. How appropriate.

In spite of the modernization, it was still obvious that east was east and west was west. It startled and shocked my dad. He was a great individualist, a champion of individual liberties and rights. To see what it meant when the collective was put above all else horrified him. To see the reality of socialism and the shitty mass apartment buildings drove home beliefs in a whole new way. Had my father lived in East Germany, I have no doubt he would have escaped or died trying.

And then today. 20 years on, we are; I'm not yet the age my parents were then, but it's getting close. I look back, still, with great emotion on that day. For a moment, I lived through history, and helped pull down that Wall.