Hannah is settling down on a wood bench in an old S-Bahn car, uncomfortable as ever but familiar and she is overcome with nostalgia. She had been here two years earlier but had not used the S-Bahn. She looks around. The trains are a little more modern in design but still brick red and ochre, unchanged since the days of her childhood here.
Berlin’s combined subway/suburban rapid transit system was built well before the turn of the century, during the reign of the Kaiser, extended as the city grew, not changed.
The double decker buses have been around forever as well.
Hannah’s six-year-old Emily and ten-year-old Max sit facing her, clutching a box of chocolates and a large bunch of wildflowers they picked in the morning, slightly wilting. Having arrived from Canada just the day before, they are on their way to Oma’s. Oma isn’t very well, so there won’t be any fancy outings this time around. Not with her.
Max studies the very complicated transit map. “I think we’ll have to transfer at Friedrichstrasse,” he announces, “and go down to the Ringbahn.”
And so they struggle in a harried crowd, pushed along grimy corridors and pass a control booth, showing not only tickets but passports as well. On they go to another platform, a little dirtier, Hannah holding on to her kids. When the train pulls in they feel lucky to find seats at a window though this is the subterranean part of the system and there will be nothing much to see. Hannah closes her eyes, feels jet lagged but very excited and happy to be back in her hometown.
The train slows down as they enter a gloomy, dim space. An abandoned station!
All conversation stops.
Unter den Linden reads a grimy sign, and Hannah can make out debris on the darkened platform. The children are glued to the window and gasp when they spot a single uniformed guard with a long rifle over his shoulder. No one is waiting to board and the train speeds up halfway along and hurtles through the tunnel.
“What was that? Why is the station all broken?” Emily wants to know.
“It’s not being used,” Hannah explains,” because we are now below the territory of East Berlin, which is on the other side of the Wall. The Communist Government doesn’t allow its people to leave, and if the subway stopped here—” they enter another station, and they slow down once more to look at a grim shadowy sight.
Hallesches Tor Hannah reads, and feels nostalgia, words from her childhood, now in this whole new reality. The sign was not much cleaner during the war, to be sure. Still. Though he is trying to hide, they spot the guard with the tommy gun beside the old station master’s office.
“Does he have to stay down here in the dark all day?” asks Emily. “This looks just spooky,” says Max. “So, this is the enemy.”
Hannah nods. On the other side of that wall in her beloved hometown, there is the enemy!
They pass several more of the ‘Geisterbahnhöfe’ and then emerge in a brilliantly lighted, clean and busy station and the train disgorges a few passengers.
Many Berliners boycott the S-Bahn because the system and its administration is seen as Communist. Additional streetcar and bus routes have been established on the East and West sides to ease transit needs.
“Do we know anybody on the other side who wants to come out, Mom?” Max wants to know. Hannah nods. We do. A close friend from High School days. They have five children.
“What are their names?” This is important to Emily. She wants to visualize this family. Hannah only remembers the name of the oldest daughter, Gudrun. So, she makes up four others. “Some of our Berlin friends send them things.”
“Why don’t we?”
“We did a couple of times, but it made life more difficult for them, so we stopped. It aroused suspicion.”
“One day,” says Max, “one day they’ll get sick and tired of all this, and they’ll just stop it. All of them together.” Wishful thinking, idealism of a ten-year-old? But twenty years later, with a little luck and the help of some brave people, they will do just that. And the whole world will celebrate with them.
Now out to catch a bus. The children climb upstairs and run all the way to the front where an elderly couple, hearing them speak English, say, ‘Hello’ and ‘where are you going?’ and Emily explains about Oma. It will be a very good day. Here on our side.
Lucky us.