Late September 1988. I fly from Philadelphia to West Berlin, or as the Germans say, Berlin West as opposed to Berlin Ost. Seven years after my flight from JFK to Frankfurt. Seven years. That’s a long time in the life of a twenty-nine year old. In fact, it was my entire adult life up to that point, if you count adult life beginning after receiving an undergraduate degree. Seven years. One in Germany. Six in the U.S.
Twenty-nine. A man, not a recent college graduate. A year in Germany. A year waiting tables in Washington, DC and figuring out the next step. And then five years selling telecommunications equipment to office managers in small companies in Washington and Philadelphia.
Not married. Not in a relationship. Nothing holding me in Philadelphia. I wanted to take another crack at doing academic work. I was an ok-student at Georgetown at best. I hadn’t applied myself in high school, went to a small Catholic College for a year, caught fire, was planning to transfer to St. Joseph’s in Philadelphia, when my Jesuit uncle, and Professor of Theology, at Georgetown, convinced the Dean of the College to let me do one semester at Georgetown. If I could prove that I was up to, I could apply, and perhaps be accepted. It all worked out. I had applied myself.
This time around, however, I wanted to apply myself again. IR. International Relations. I thought that was what I wanted. One year in Germany, in Berlin, to get my German up to speed, to do a lot of reading, then return to the U.S. and enter a Master’s program either at Tufts in Boston or Columbia in NYC or at Johns Hopkins in Washington. I knew that my chances of acceptance to any of them would be slim. Not a problem. I’ll stay in Germany. Study IR there.
I’ll never forget the sight of Berlin as the plane circled in and approached landing at Flughafen Tegel. I had visited Berlin back in August of 1982, at the end of my one year in Germany. Three days, if I recall correctly. The usual sights in West Berlin. And I went into East Berlin for most of a day. But had taken the train to Berlin then, had not seen it from high above.
I was taken aback by how green Berlin was. Trees everywhere. Yes, buildings. Yes, Siedlungen (residential areas). Yes, boulevards. But green, green, and more green. And water. Lots of water. The Havel. The Spree. The Wannsee. And canals snaking. I was taken aback, again. Water. Cool. Shimmering. Winding in and around. A bulge here. A lake. A bulge there. Another lake.
This was a city, a major city in Europe? Where were the skyscapers, the rows of apartment buildings, the parking lots? Where was the concrete? Those were my expectations. Based on what I had known, what I thought made up a major Western city. I was wrong. Strange. I had been to Frankfurt, to Munich, to Düsseldorf. Back in 1982.
Ken picked me up at the airport. We had spoken once on the phone. Suburban Philadelphia to West Berlin. A long-distance phone call. Not long. Perhaps ten minutes. I recall to this day. Sitting on the side of my mother’s bed. The phone on her side table. White. 1970s version.
Ken was recommended to me by Assenka, who was two years behind me at Georgetown, and married to a close friend of mine, Joe, who was in my class at Georgetown. Assenka was working on her Ph.D. in German Literature at the University in Minnesota in Minneapolis. Ken had done his Master’s in the same program.
Ken, a native of Minnesota, was living in West Berlin, with his wife and two young children. His wife was a doctor, a medical physician, at the U.S. Army Hospital in West Berlin. Remember, Folks, Berlin was a divided city. The Soviets in the Eastern Zone. In the Western Zone the French in the northern sector, the British in the middle, and the Americans in the southern sector. Berlin split in two. West Berlin with three sectors. The three Western Allies. September 1988. Cold War. Or less cold. Perhaps cooling down.
Thinking historically is not easy. It is the foundation of human thinking. We only know what has gone before, what happened up until now. We can project, predict, anticipate, hope for, dream about, work towards. But we can only know for sure, and not even that, what has happened, what was, is factual, took place.
This all makes looking back difficult, risky, shaky. Memory. Why? Because we know what has happened since. How cold was the Cold War, back then, when my plane landed at Flughafen Tegel, on that sunny, warm, glistening day in late September of 1988?
You see, in order to answer that question halfway accurately, we would have to erase or minimize or push away or ignore what we know about the events that would take place just over a year later, in November of 1989, and in the years thereafter.
A very difficult thing to do. As it is with any and all situations when we think back, when we remember, when we try to recall, what happened, how it was, what it felt like, what our thoughts and emotions were. At that time. To peel back the onion. A figure of speech often used. But is it adequate?
How can a human being remove, push to the side, ignore, downplay, minimize, what they have experienced, seen, felt, emoted, struggled with, were amazed by, what took them off-guard, threw them off-balance?
Ken and I talked for only about ten minutes on that phone call. And just a week or so before I flew over. He would pick me up at the airport. I could stay with him and his family in their apartment in Wannsee, in the southern tip of West Berlin, just across the water from where the famous Potsdam Conference from the summer of 1945 took place, when Stalin, Churchill and Truman met to negotiate the final details of occupying defeated Germany.
I could stay with Ken and his family until I found my own place to live. We had never met. We had a common friend, Assenka. He was married, two little kids. I had not even introduced myself to his wife. A ten-minute phone call. They had a guest room. Small, but more than enough. I could stay with them until. Open-ended.
I look back. Kind of extraordinary. Not to me back then, though. Natural. Flowed. No big deal. People help each other out. A friend of a friend. But still. I flew over with no place to live. I would have to wing it. No guarantees. No promises. Nothing set up. Figure it out once I was on the ground there. Frankly, it never occurred to me that things would not work out. Why shouldn’t they? What could go wrong? I’ll find my way.
Ken was waiting for me. Next to his car. A Volve stationwagon. Blue. A few years old. Solid. Ken, almost my height. Beard. Balding. In excellent physical shape. He was a serious cyclist. Very friendly. Warm, inviting, expressive eyes. And that great Minnesota accent with its long and round and pronounced O. Minna-sOHHHda. We had hit it off during our phone call. We hit it off even more during our drive from Tegel to Wannsee.
We’re people. Ken. John. Human beings. Social creatures. Meant to connect, to communicate, to share, to help out, to ask, listen, advise, commiserate, celebrate, explore. To support.
Late September 1988. West Berlin. I was back in Germany. This time in the heart of East Germany. On an island. East Germans. Russians. Warsaw Pact. But safe. West Berlin was made safe and stable in August 1961, when the wall was built. More about that in later posts.
I was very, very excited. Germany. Again. The language. The history. The people. Learning. Growing. Experiencing. Exploring. Everything open-ended. So much to tell. About my years since. Here in Germany. My share of pain and disappointment and struggle and internal, interior churn. However, whenever I look back, I always tell myself the same thing: “John, moving back to Germany, way back when, was the best decision you ever made.”
But that’s jumping ahead. We weren’t all that high above West Berlin. Green. Water. Buildings and neighborhoods and boulevards and streets. Landed. People coming and going. Signs, smells, faces, voices. Then Ken, the fresh air, the blue sky and the sun. I was on the ground. In Germany.