Miles and Miles of Sorrow and Hope

The tour bus that we crammed into smelled like feet and young men that had been tramping through three European countries, while living out of one backpack each.  The atmosphere was veiled in three parts exhaustion, two parts raw nerves, and one part nervous energy.

The game schedule put our soccer team on the pitch with an East Berlin team somewhere around noon.  There were a few of us – see at least eight – that were “advised not to participate” in this particular friendly due to a tactical miscalculation at a certain Bier Garten in Munich.  Some people – see the chaperons – did not find our hijinks amusing.

The dudes who work here have no sense of humor

At any rate, East Germany, specifically East Berlin, was a surreal experience.

The tour bus came to a halt at Checkpoint Charlie, brakes squealing and screeching like a dying bird. It was like a toll booth. If a toll booth had steel-y eyed guards with automatic rifles.

There were two guards on the bus asking (demanding) proper documentation, and a flock of them swarming around and over the bus like locusts. There were mirrors wheeled out and shoved under the bus. Even then, it didn’t sink in.  What was going on and the meaning of this menacing wall to our left and right and on and on.

East Berlin is gray. The weather was gray, the buildings – all beautiful like they were crafted in some other time and place – the faces of the people during their day-to-day were gray. The coffee was gunpowder black and the cigarettes were strong. This gray, all this gray everywhere was contrasted in a ridiculous manner by the artwork on The Wall.

Art. Not graffiti.

Miles and miles of wall. Miles and miles of stories told through art and imagination and hope and sorrow.  Miles and miles of it.  That’s what I remember most about East Berlin. The hope. The sorrow, and the stick-it-to-the-man attitude of the artists.  This was not graffiti. The images on the beast were pure poetry.

We (those who played that day) were thrashed soundly and we climbed back on the bus, beaten and weary, and the whole checkpoint dance began again. More rigorous this time. Seemed to me, folks wanted to get Out more than they wanted to get in.

As I waited for my turn to present “proper documentation”, sleep took me and I drifted to a place free of walls and gray.  Until.  Until I felt a solid *thump* on my right shoulder. Not a thump of flesh and bone, no,no. This thump came from the working end of an AK-47 assault rifle. The border guard wanted my paperwork and was unhappy about waiting.  Those gentlemen have no patience OR sense of humor.

Believe that. East Berlin in the late 80′s did not stand for bologna.