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Berlin wall: When the cold barrier buckled
Abu Dhabi editor, Abdullah Rasheed, recounts days in Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall
- By Abdullah Rasheed, Abu Dhabi Editor, Gulf News
- Published: 00:00 November 8, 2009
- Image Credit: Abdullah Rasheed, Gulf News
- The chance to witness the fall of the Berlin Wall turned out to be the highlight of a visit to Germany back in 1989 for the writer
As I got off the plane that had just landed at Frankfurt Airport, in the former West Germany, I felt the blood freezing in my veins.
The chill was hard to come to terms with for someone coming from the comfort of 30 degrees Celsius. In Frankfurt, it was minus-five degrees and it had snowed in the morning.
It was the first of November, 1989, and I was taking a break from work and decided to spend it in the two Germanys — West and East.
I reckoned I could also witness and record events of those defining days as the Eastern Bloc was tumbling all over Europe.
But there was more in the air than the few snowflakes flying off the ground. There was a sense of anticipation as the news went around that tens of thousands of East Germans were flocking to the Berlin Wall, the dreadful symbol of Communism's domination. I decided to head out to Berlin.
As I landed there, people were saying that the Communist regime was falling in East Germany. I left West Berlin airport to check in at a hotel; it was a 20-minute drive. I tucked away my luggage and hurried out despite the fatigue — it was a very long day of travelling from Dubai to Berlin through Frankfurt.
I asked the taxi driver to take me to the nearest checkpoint at the Berlin Wall. There the scene was festive. Thousands of people had congregated in the area.
There were people writing on the wall in different languages, others drew pictures and symbols, still others played music and danced. It was a happy crowd celebrating the fall of the Communist Bloc.
I had two visas, one to East Germany, so the next morning I took a taxi to the wall and told the driver I wanted to go to the "other side". He seemed stunned. It was strange to hear that someone was going east as everyone else seemed to be fleeing to the west.
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Smoking wheels
It was early morning when I arrived in East Berlin. There were three main highways connecting the two cities.
On one of them, I began to see the East German-made Trabants scuttling along on their two-stroke engines; the cars were famous for their poor performance and the plumes of white smoke they left in their wake.
For a small car that looked like a toy, a Trabant made an annoying sound similar to that of a tractor. Its maximum speed was 50 miles per hour.
I spent the whole day in East Berlin, hopping in at street cafés, touring railway stations and wandering aimlessly in the Red Square. Before dusk, I booked a room at the Stadt Berlin Hotel and then went back to West Berlin to get my luggage.
The next day, November 3, I moved to East Berlin. Border checkpoints were still dangerous. There was visible tension between people and border guards. I reached the Stadt Berlin, put my bag in the room and went out to look for a taxi.
It was cold; it felt colder than it actually was. It started to snow as I asked the taxi driver to take me to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) offices in downtown East Berlin.
I knew someone there who was introduced to me by another Palestinian working at the time in the Abu Dhabi PLO office.
We reached the place in 15 minutes. I asked a PLO official if an interview with a senior East German official could be arranged. Two days later, I was sitting with the last foreign minister of East Germany in his office. It was an interview I will never forget.
I spent the next few days interviewing citizens and visitors on the streets, in restaurants; actually I interviewed anybody who spoke English.
Sheer joy
On November 9, people started to congregate in groups. East Germans were drunk with joy. One could hear English, French and Spanish spoken on the streets besides German. The revolution had started.
Families flocked to the wall, something they had been afraid to do since it was erected in August 1961. I stood near the wall, chatting with demonstrators and spectators. Nobody knew what was going to happen.
Women were making tea and coffee on the street near the wall. A few young people had climbed trees — just a few days ago, they would have been simply shot by the sniper on duty! Thousands of people, men and women chanted. Some were handing out coffee and tea; it was cold, but it was obvious the enthusiastic crowd didn't care.
The traffic in the surrounding areas had slowed and it was getting closer to midnight. We waited there until dawn, and the temperature dropped to almost ten below zero. We listened to the radio and watched television crews doing their live broadcasts.
One radio said demonstrations had erupted in Leipzig with more than 70,000 people taking part.
By noon the next day, West Berlin was flooded with East Germans. In one hour, more than 100,000 people crossed over to the western side, I was told. I crossed over, too, through the famous Checkpoint Charlie. On the other side, West Germans were lining up, embracing their long-lost neighbours, as they crossed the checkpoint.
What looked strange to me then was the sight of West German border policemen handing out 100 Deutsche mark to each arrival.
I was later told it was to spend a good time in West Berlin. For East Germans, it was as if the doors to heaven had been thrown open the day the wall ceased to be a barrier. A few days later, it fell. The rest is history.
Abu Dhabi editor, Abdullah Rasheed, was in Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall and looks back at the force of feeling on both sides of the barrier in the days leading to its fall — from the heightened sense of anticipation that something was about to give to the bonhomie displayed after it became history.
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