Before I left for a year teaching in Germany (1966-1967), my mother pleaded with me, “Please don’t go to Berlin.” Berlin. . . . the city that had captured my attention for the past 5-6 years. I had been so focused on the events of Berlin in the late 1950s early 1960s that my parents had taken me on trips to “get me off the grid” which at that time was television and newspapers: a road trip to the East Coast in 1961.
Ironically, in the summer of 1961, we were in New York City in Times’ Square when I looked up at the moving billboard reporting the news: the East Germans were building a wall to keep people from going to the West. West Berlin would be a large island in the middle of Communist East Germany (the DDR—Deutsche Demokratische Republik) . I stood there watching the news crawl around the building reading it outloud with tears. After “The Wall” was built, we heard about people trying to escape East Germany: ramming their cars through the gates, swimming and being shot at, digging underground tunnels, being smuggled out in automobiles. The whole situation was horrifying.
I wasn’t just interested in Berlin politically but also had heard about the museums and the artifacts that were there. One of my majors in college was history, especially ancient history. West Berlin had the famous bust of Nefertiti but East Berlin had the re-constructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon in the Pergamon Museum.
I didn’t promise my mother I wouldn’t go to Berlin in 1966, but I thought it was unlikely a poorly paid teacher’s assistant could afford a trip to Berlin which required an airplane trip from Munich. Neither of us knew I would fall in love with a Berliner.
I arrived in Germany September 1966 with my high school friend Carol arriving a few weeks later. We were fortunate that her nanny position was a few hours awy by train so we could see each other once a month on holidays.
I celebrated Christmas 1966 in Lindau with three friends: Carol (American), Monica (Irish) and Helga (German). We had a wonderful time. Everything was hilarious for the three of us away from home for the holidays. We decided to cook a turkey which none of us had cooked before. Although the “giblets” are in a nice neat bag in America, the organs were still attached which grossed all of us out. Helga’s mother had left a tree for us with candles for us to light Christmas Eve after dinner. Then we went to midnight mass which was beautiful.
Although Lindau has a very mild winter being on a large lake and shielded by the Alps on two sides, ski lifts in Austria took us up a mountain so we could have snow at Christmas. Monica and Carol had no boots but they really weren’t much help with 4 foot drifts. Carol and I were bi-lingual,but Monica could speak no German; Helga could speak no English. And, yet if I try to remember that Christmas I just remember laughter. Monica and Helga even tried to communicate with hand signals and very limited vocabulary of the other’s language, which also made us all laugh. I don’t think I had time to get homesick for the holidays.
After several days in Lindau, I spent the rest of the holidays with my boyfriend, Reinhard——in Berlin.
fortgesetzt werden.. . . .
