Chapter 5

Berlin is by no means far away. An hour and half to get to the ferry and on the German side a few hours drive, the last hour spent in a queue, trying to get to the centre of Berlin. The queue started in the suburbs and was caused by roadwork all the way to Alexanderplatz where our hotel was. The bus moved at walking speed more or less, but eventually we were there.

We had planned what we wanted to see. Naturally, we were going to see Brandenburger Tor, Kurf¸rstendam, what was left of The Wall, and the Television tower. Those are the kind of tourist attractions you just have to see. Lisa was very keen on a museum called the Pergamon Museum. The Reichtag with the new glass dome on top was also something we had to see. Last but not least, we wanted to go to the zoo to see the giant panda. Berlin Zoo was just about the only place in Europe where you could see a panda.

After checking into the hotel we took a walk. We were ideally located and could walk from Alexanderplatz, passing a building call Rote Rathaus, a big red brick building that used to be the town hall. Then we passed the Museuminsel, a small island in the river with several big museums, and walked down Unter Den Linden to Brandenburger Tor. It was even hotter than it had been at home and it provided us with a brilliant excuse to sample some good German beer. We didn't get back to the hotel until late, went straight to bed and slept like babies.

In the morning I suggested that we shower together to save some time. It would have been faster to shower alone in succession, but it was much more fun to do it together. We ended up in bed again and had to shower one more time because we were drenched in sweat after making love for close to an hour. Fortunately we woke early and we still had plenty of time for the planned sightseeing.

The Pergamon museum was fantastic. German archaeologists had excavated the ancient Pergamon temple of Zeus in the early part of the nineteen hundreds and shipped what they could find to Germany. It was then pieced together and rebuilt in the huge museum halls. I tell you, it was impressive. The Gate of Isthar, also excavated and rebuilt in the museum, was equally grand. We spent half a day inside the pleasantly cooled museum.

The evening of the second day we asked the man in the hotel lobby if there were any pre-arranged tours to the former DDR. He shook his head.

"Why would you want to go there? All you will find is unemployment, poverty and a disillusioned people," he said.

I was surprised by his answer. We had seen the wall fall ten years ago and seen how much construction work was going on in Berlin. The German economy was one of the strongest in Europe.

"Why?" I naively asked. "Why would it be so. Germany is united. They are free now."

"Free," he smiled. "What is freedom if you have no work and no money."

"But the factories has been modernised and if people can't find work, they can go wherever they want in Germany. It's one country. They couldn't do that before," Lisa said.

"No, the wall is still there. Not physically, no, but if you have no money you can go nowhere. The politicians in Bonn sold all the factories to big companies. They closed them down. All the western companies wanted were an easy way to the German market and tax deduction. The people who worked there never had a chance. Germany has not been united. West conquered East and took everything they could get hold of."

"But... but..."

Lisa didn't know what to say. This was nonsense. Germany had been united. The wall was gone and the people of former DDR were free. Free from dictatorship, free from the secret police, Stasi.

"The wall is gone, Stasi is gone. You are free to say and think what you want. You are free," I said.

"Everybody can look in the Stasi archives and see what people did for their country. Why not the Bundesschutz's archives? Did the DDR spies do anything that the Bundesschutz didn't do? No, but we lost and we pay the price. You will never understand."

He waved me off. We went to our room.

"He must have been a privileged man in the former DDR. That's probably why he said those things," Lisa said.

We agreed that it had to be the case; still it took a little while for me to forget what he had said.

It was probably a good thing that we didn't go too far away from our hotel the next day. In the evening on our third day in Berlin the sky began to look dark and threatening. Lisa looked up.

"We better not take a stroll tonight," I said.

"I think we'll be lucky if we can make it home to the hotel before it starts raining," she replied. "It's a pity to waste a whole evening in a hotel room."

"We can always watch something on the telly," I grinned.

We did get back to the hotel just before the rain and thunder began. We had bought a couple of chilled beers on the way and we sat down on the bed to cool down a little and rest our weary feet. I turned on the telly and flipped through the channels. It was the first time we had turned it on and we quickly realised that everything was German. There was an English movie on one of the channels but it was dubbed. It was a James Bond movie and it was kind of wrong to hear Roger Moore speak German. He sounded wrong.

Lisa picked up the pay-movie leaflet next to the telly and we looked it over. We had seen all the movies they featured on the first three channels, but there was a fourth channel for adults. That was basically all it said. No preview pictures and no titles of the movies they showed. Not that I had any doubts about the contents. Lisa looked at me and giggled.

"Have you ever seen one of those?" she asked.

I could feel my face go red.

"No, you?" I said.

"No."

An awkward silence followed. I wanted to see an erotic movie, but I would have preferred to see it alone. It was kind of embarrassing to do it with Lisa. Still, I would rent one. What if somebody I knew saw me do it. That would be even more embarrassing, so this was probably the best opportunity. I pulled myself together and mentally I took a deep breath.

"Do you want to see one?" I asked.

It was her turn to blush as she nodded. I found the channel, keyed in our room number and we were ready. Unfortunately there was nothing but a sign saying that the next movie started at nine. It was only ten minutes but nearly enough for me to lose my nerve. The minutes passed painstakingly slow and I didn't know what to do with myself. Lisa was sitting uneasy as well, but we held out and the movie began: "Junge M"dchen auf urlaub" translating into "Young girls on vacation".