Some who have followed my blog may remember that I lived in West Berlin for a time in the early 1980’s.  I took time off from graduate school, flew to Amsterdam with my Student Eurrail pass, and began what would turn out to be the time of my life.  I rode the train all over Europe, from Narvik, Norway (the northern-most train station in the world), to sun-splashed Grenada, Spain.  After that, I spent six weeks at a Goethe Institute for intensive German language study.  When the six weeks were over, it was off to Berlin, where I found work in a building supply warehouse.  The owner of the business invited me to his house, where over a glass of cognac he told me he could do everything above board and take 30% of my wages out for income tax, an amount the business would have to match, or he could pay me directly from the petty cash fund, tax-free, and no one would know the difference.  Which would you prefer? he asked.

You can probably guess my answer.

Berlin in the early 1980’s was a far different city than it is today.  Of course, the most obvious difference was the presence of the ugly 87 mile long wall that completely encircled the western half of the city.  Because of the wall, and West Berlin’s resulting isolation , it was a city in decline.  Businesses were often hesitant to locate there, and it could be difficult to entice affluent professionals to live there. 

From a legal perspective, West Berlin was not part of West Germany.  Berlin remained an occupied city well into the 1980’s, and although citizens of the the city could run for national office, they were not allowed to vote in federal German elections.  Since the city was technically not a part of West Germany, its citizens were not subject to Germany’s mandatory military draft.  As a result, it was a popular haven for young German men seeking to avoid military service.  Many of these young people lived as squatters in vacant apartment buildings in run-down neighborhoods like Kreuzberg.  Occassionally, the police would attempt to clear out squatters, resulting in near riots.  Once I was inadvertently caught in the middle of one of these squatter riots, complete with flying rocks and tear gas.  I moved to a side street and took refuge inside a telephone booth while I watched a hundred or so people my age run past with police in pursuit. 

But that was not the time I was nearly arrested.

About once every four or five weeks I would cross over into East Berlin.  I found that side of the city a fascinating place.  With a little imagination, one could imagine this was what all of Germany must have been like in the dark days before World War II.  The center of East Berlin, on first glance, was quite impressive.  It was dominated by the wide open space of Alexanderplatz, which had been the center of Berlin’s urban life years before.  After the war, rather than rebuild all that had been destroyed there, the Communist authorities simply bulldozed the ruins away, creating a huge new square in what would become the administrative center of East Berlin.  On the periphery of the huge square were gleaming new buildings, but on close inspection one could see they were cheaply constructed, and were an aesthetic anomaly in the midst of the old baroque city.

Just off of Alexanderplatz were the great museums of East Berlin, especially the Pergamon with its amazing collection of Mideast antiquities, including Pergamon’s great Alter to Zeus, and the Ishtar Gate of Babylon.  Both of these structures are so large they require entire rooms for their display.  For the history-minded, the Neue Wach never ceased to fascinate.  Under the Communist government, the neo-classic structure housed the remains of an unnamed soldier from the war, and was called “The Memorial to the Victims of Fascism and Militarism.”  I always considered the irony of that name while watching gray-uniformed guards with Stahlhelm helmuts surprisingly similar to those worn by German soldiers in World War II march back and forth with their Prussian goose-step, the very image of militarism run amok.

Moving out from Alexanderplatz and the Mitte, one would arrive in the real East Germany.  I would often take the rattly old street car, itself a trip back in time, to the old working class districts of Prenzlauer Berg and Pankow.  The visitor to Berlin today would find Prenzlauer Berg to be a chic center of nightlife and trendy shops.  This was far from the case 30 years ago.  Back then, when night arrived in these quarters of the city, the first thing you noticed was the darkness.  In this relatively poor Communist society, there were no lit advertising signs, no neon, and few street lights.  Looking through apartment windows, you would see rooms illuminated by a single low watt bulb, and maybe the blueish glow of a small black and white television set. 

I would often stop in a small pastry shop on Berlinerstrasse, on the outer edge of Prenzlauer Berg.  This was usually the last thing I did before returning to the West.  It would always be evening when I went in, not long before the shop closed for the night.  Most of the time I was the only patron there.  A very attractive young woman a few years older than me always worked behind the counter alone.  Her name was Trudi.  I would try to engage her in conversation, but Trudi was shy and understandably apprehensive  to appear too friendly to this strange foreigner from the West.  But her pastries were delicious, and her long blonde bangs that would fall over her blue eyes were enough to bring me back time after time.

As the year 1981 drew to a close, I knew my time in Berlin was short.  I was due back to the United States in January to complete my degree.  I decided to take some of my meager earnings from working in the warehouse and treat myself to a special day in the East. 

In those days, one West German mark was worth about five East German marks.  However, it was against East German law to bring East marks into the country from the West.  All money exchanges were required to take place in East Germany, where the exchange would be one East mark for each West German mark.  This means anyone trading western currency for East German money was only receiving about 20% of the money’s true value.  I decided to do something about that this time.  I determined to get my full monetary value.  I went to the bank near my West Berlin apartment and exchanged about $100 for about 1000 East German marks. 

As I got ready for one last trip into East Berlin, I stuffed all of the money into my socks, pulled on my Texas cowboy boots, headed out the door, and took the U-Bahn to Kreuzberg, home of Checkpoint Charlie, and the gateway to East Berlin.  Once through the checkpoint, I was ushered to an exchange window, where visitors were required to purchase East marks at the official exchange rate of one West mark for one East mark.  I exchanged the minimum amount allowed, 30 marks.  I proceeded out of the building and found a park bench where I stuck my hand into my boot and pulled out 1000 marks.  Money in hand, I began what I thought would be a great day of capitalist splurging in Communist East Germany. 

Most of the day was a blast, everything I had wanted.  I did many of the same things I had done before.  I visited two or three museums.  I watched the goose-stepping guards at the Neue Wach.  Instead of eating my usual wurst and kraut for lunch, however, I dined at a nice restaurant in the Mitte, feeling quite out of place among the government officials and Russian diplomats that patronized this establishment.

After lunch I did some shopping.  I bought a hand-carved wooden beer stein, and a traditional nutcracker that is still displayed in my living room today.  I entered a book store and noticed a beautiful atlas that I immediately coveted.  A handwritten index card next to the atlas showed the price: 64.80 East marks.  I examined the cover and the inside of the book, and did not see the price printed anywhere.  Perfect.  The atlas was now mine.

The day wore on.  As customary, I took the streetcar to my little pastry shop.  Trudi was there, and she smiled at me with recognition when I entered her shop.  She actually answered me with more than the usual nod and soft monosyllabic response to anything I said.  I remained there for nearly an hour, and by the time I left the streets were dark and dinner beckoned.  I found a restaurant near Karl Marx Allee, and again treated myself to what was as close to fine dining as East Berlin had to offer, complete with Turkish coffee and Hungarian brandy for dessert. 

I looked at my watch, and it was nearly 10:00 PM.  Time to head home.  I looked in my wallet and saw that I still had well over 100 marks.  I put all but about 1 mark and some change back in my sock and headed to Checkpoint Charlie.

There is a scene in the 1985 film "Gotcha" starring Anthony Edwards and Linda Fiorentino in which the Edwards character is detained on the Eastern side of Checkpoint Charlie.  The East German authorities take him into a small room for interrogation.  The movie has a few bloopers, and scenes that take place on the eastern side of the wall were obviously filmed in West Berlin.  However, I can say with certainty that the interrogation scene in that film was quite realistic, and the plain little interrogation room looked very much like the real thing.  I know this because I was interrogated on the eastern side of Checkpoint Charlie that night.

It was 11:00 PM when I arrived at the border.  Every other time I had been to the East, I had returned much earlier, and the crossing had been quite busy and uneventful.  Unfortunately, that was not the case on this night.  I was the only person crossing over.  The guard asked to see all of the things I had purchased during the day.  This had never happened before.  I put the nutcracker, wooden stein, and atlas on the table.  All three were wrapped nicely in brown paper.  The guard unwrapped them.  Every other time I had been to the East, no one had taken any interest at all in what I had purchased.  A vague sickness gripped my gut as I tried not to betray my growing apprehension.

The guard looked at the atlas and thumbed through the pages.  He asked how much I paid for it.  “18 marks,” I answered. 

“No, how much did you really pay for it?”   

“18 marks, just as I said.”

Then it got scary.  “Komm mit mir,” he said ominously.  He led me into the afore mentioned interrogation room.

“How much money did you bring into the DDR?” he asked.

“30 marks, just like I claimed on my customs form,” I answered.

“No, how much did you really bring?”  My answer was the same.

Then he opened the book to the page that contains all the copyright information.  He pointed to what I have highlighted here:

How was I to know that imbedded within all the mumbo jumbo of publishing information would be the set price of 64.80 East German marks?  The guard said. “You paid 64 marks 80 for this book.  You only exchanged 30 marks.  How much did you bring into the country?”

I did not know what to say.  My mind went on auto-drive, and without even thinking I said, “Aber ich habe das Buch mit sondrem Preis gekauft!”  "But I bought the book on sale for a special price!"

Now, at this point, you must remember where I was.  East Germany was a Communist state.  As such, the normal laws of supply and demand did not function very well at all.  Stores had little incentive to move inventory off the shelves as quickly as they do in the United States.  Special sales to increase demand simply did not happen in East Germany.

The guard told me to empty my pockets so he could locate any additional money I had neglected to claim.  I had a little bit of West German change mixed with my East German money.  I had a set of keys and a comb.  And I had my wallet.  Fortunately, I had remembered to move my unspent marks from the wallet to the inside of my socks.  Still, I had heard stories of men being subjected to strip searches at this crossing.  I feared for the worst, and began wondering how I would get word to my father that I was being held in an East German prison for smuggling currency.

The guard left all the loose change and other items on the table while he explored the contents of my wallet.  A Few credit cards.  Some pictures.  Miscellaneous slips of paper and such.  Then he pulled out something a little different.

“Was ist das?”  he asked.  “What is this?” he said, holding a small, square shaped object wrapped in red cellophane.

“Das ist ein Gummi,” I answered.  “Sie koennen es behalten!”  “That is a rubber.  You can keep it!”

The guard examined the condom for a few moments.  Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, he burst out laughing.  “Ein Gummi fuer die Maedchen, eh!”  A rubber for the girls, eh?

I smiled warily and said, “Yes, but not tonight.”

Again, he laughed.  And his laugh was genuine.  All the seriousness of the situation evaporated.  He handed me my things and told me to go on and have a good night.

“Danke!”  I said, trying to control my hands that were still shivering with fear.

Most people don’t realize that Checkpoint Charlie was really a series of checkpoints covering a distance of about 50 yards.  I had been detained at the first check, where customs officers cleared visitors for exit.  After that, there was another checkpoint where passports, visas, and customs documents were reviewed again.  The final checkpoint was directly on the border, just a few feet from the American soldiers who manned the western side of Checkpoint Charlie.  As I was hurriedly walking from the second checkpoint to the third, I heard the familiar voice of my interrogator call out, “Hallo!  Hallo!”

I was just a few feet from the final crossing.  I did not stop.  I walked with a faster pace. 

The guard must have remembered the state of residence shown on my passport.  He called out again, “Hallo!  Texas, zurueck!”  Texas, come back!

My heart dropped to the floor.  After the near elation of being let free, was I now to be arrested after all?  I turned around, the shivering in my hands starting anew.

“You forgot something!”  He extended his hand, holding a West German 5 pfennig coin.  About 2 cents.  I put my heart back in my chest cavity and thanked him.  “Gute Nacht,” he said.

I continued across the final check and quickly passed through western customs.  Although I knew I was safe, I walked as fast as I could until Checkpoint Charlie was out of sight.  I saw a grimey little corner bar and walked inside.  I quickly drank two Berliner Kindl beers to calm my nerves, and then I, too, burst out laughing.  A rubber in my wallet had just saved me from an East German prison!

I left the bar and noticed how brightly the midnight lights of the city shone, even in this rough and run down slum of West Berlin.