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What will the title of your book be?

posted 3 years, 6 months ago
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Oh, don't be so arrogant. We knew happiness like everybody else.

The reason that people watched and resented you was that in our culture we don't portray affection publically in the same way that you do in your culture. Nothing good or bad about it, just different.

posted 3 years, 6 months ago
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I was born in East Berlin and lived there when the Berlin Wall fell. I was 15 years old at the time. We didn't have a TV so we didn't get the news until the next morning when my dad heard it on the radio. My mom came into my room and said, "The wall is open." I remember how excited she looked, almost ecstatic. And I still remember feeling a total blank myself, because I had no concept of it. I knew family and friends in West Germany, but I had never been there, so all I thought in that historic moment was "And what is behind it (the Berlin Wall)?"

Now I live Portland, OR, and I'm still amazed by the miracle that I am here and that all my parents have to do to visit me is hop on the plane. I still remember my aunt, who had left East Germany and lived in West Berlin, being denied entry to East Germany to visit her brother who was sick with cancer and was also denied entry to attend his funeral.

And sometimes I'm sad that the country I was born in is gone. People helped each other back then and material stuff wasn't so important. You were happy if you had what you needed. I miss that.

But those moments are rare, mostly I feel incredibly grateful for the life I have been able to build because the Wall is no more. I found a place in the world where I feel home (yeah Portland). I have friends here who are my family. I don't constantly think, "What will happen if I say what I think?" "Can I trust this person or are they just pretending to be on my side?" I can just say what I think and the worst that can happen is that somebody gets angry at me.

The last thing I would like to share is my deep gratitude to Mr. Gorbatchev for not sending the tanks into East Germany. Having had grant parents who lived through two wars, parents who were born in war, I am so grateful that the Berlin Wall fell without bloodshed.

posted 3 years, 6 months ago
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