Thirty years ago, fresh out of A and on our first tours, my classmate Matt Bryza was serving in Poznan, Poland, and my wife, Margret Bjorgulfsdottir, and I were in Copenhagen. Matt and I had been friends in grad school at Fletcher and were eager to get together.
Since Matt was serving in Poland in the bad old Iron Curtain days, he frequently went to decompress in West Berlin, so we decided to meet up there over Veterans Day weekend in Little did I know at the time that it would be one of the most momentous experiences in my plus years in the U. Foreign Service. The journey got off to an inauspicious start.
On the train from Copenhagen to West Berlin, an East German border guard took my diplomatic passport, barked something unintelligible and disappeared. Having seen too many spy thrillers, I thought this was it, we would be whisked away in darkness. But instead, he simply returned with deutsche marks in hand to reimburse me for a visa fee I should not have paid as a diplomat.
But, lo and behold, as we approached the Brandenburg Gate, you could hear the pounding of hammers against that hideous wall. Without much thought, two American diplomats joined the young West Berliners on top of the wall. The West Berliners were taunting the East German guards, jumping onto the east side and then climbing back up on the wall as the guards, machine guns in hand, approached them. Thankfully, the East German guards did not fire as they had been prone to do previously when East Berliners daringly tried to flee.
I recall the lengthy lines at automatic cash dispensers as East Berliners collected the DM they were entitled to upon arriving in the West. At border crossing points you could see Trabant car after Trabant car among crowds of people walking into the West, many with joyful tears streaming down their cheeks. As we strolled the streets, we ran into perhaps the only German we knew, another Fletcherite. Overcome with emotion, he uncharacteristically hugged us. That is the kind of day it was.
