Throwback Thursday: That Time in East Berlin

Despite the sun, a haze obscured stark shadows on the pavement, making them grey, rather than a clear contrast between light and dark. I looked at the small hut, in the middle of Friedrichstrasse, and thought that it looked simple, easy to walk past.

Only the much larger barriers, beyond, where the low observation towers and grey, simple walls indicated a clear demarcation between west and east, made me nervous.

My camera bag was slung over my shoulder. Every component of photographic equipment—the lenses, flash, filters—was neatly organized into its own compartment and pouch, for ease of inspection. The micro-cassette recorder in a slim partition, between the flash and the camera body.

I walked to the American hut, Checkpoint Charlie, with my passport in hand, but the officers within didn't seem to want to bother with me. They didn't care who was heading into east, communist-controlled sector of Berlin. I smiled and continued to the Soviet-controlled checkpoint.

Security was tight. Single file through a narrow passage. Lots of unsmiling faces with their cold eyes, unwavering. My passport was carefully inspected: even the blank pages were scrutinized. The man, expressionless, asked me my business in East Berlin. Tourist, I said.

I had to exchange some West German marks for East German currency, which was as small and thin as cigarette paper. An admission fee into this walled territory, which was almost like a history museum unto itself. I explained that I would only be visiting for a couple of hours, would be returning the way I had entered. After examining my camera bag, I was reminded to not photograph anyone in uniform: neither police nor military.

Friedrichstrasse, beyond the wall, was bleak. Pre-war buildings, which had been bombed when Berlin had been flattened but managed to partially stand, were sealed up with drab, grey concrete. Many blocks were still devoid of structures. I felt vindicated in making the decision, before crossing into East Berlin, to place a roll of black-and-white film into my camera.

The wide boulevard of Unter den Linden ran east and west, its center strip lined with trees of various sizes. Had some survived the war? To the west, I could just make out the Brandenburg Gate; to the east, buildings that were still blackened by soot, smoke, and whatever pollution had painted them over the decades since World War II. I decided to head east, toward the opera house, the Zeughaus, cathedral, and the 1960s TV tower, Fernsehturm.

Even in communist Germany, scaffolding would find its way to cover historic buildings. The old city hall, or rathaus, would conceal its Renaissance facade for my visit. In the neighbourhood around Nikolaikirchplatz, under a now-greying sky, the city showed some colour with the rust-orange rooftops of old architect, which had been restored after the WWII bombings. Only here had I wished I had colour film.

With the East-German marks, I purchased postcards that depicted sketches of the city around the beginning of the 20th century. I ate lunch from a street vendor—breaded meat in a white bun and soft-serve ice cream in a cone that tasted like construction paper. The change that I received, in coins, was light and felt as though I could bend one, if I had the inclination. But I wanted to keep some of this foreign currency, though prohibited, as a souvenir. I tucked them into my shoes, under each heel.

Back at Checkpoint Charlie, the line to return to the American sector was longer than it had been going in. So, while I waited for my turn to be processed by the East Germans, I reached into my camera bag and retrieved the brochure that I had picked up at the West German tourist office, near Europacentre. Having only briefly scanned the rules about entering the Soviet sector, I hadn't read anything about leaving it.

And it was at this moment that the blood in my veins froze.

Today, when I look at this 1988 memory, safe in Canada, I chalk up this experience to a lack thereof. It had been my first time travelling overseas and travelling alone. I had gone to Glasgow, Scotland, to visit a friend who was studying at the university there, and I was on my first quest to discover Roland Axam.

I was also writing a spy trilogy, which was set in, among other locales, North Berwick—where Roland was born—and Berlin, where the young agent was an observer for a defection from Soviet-controlled East Berlin to the west.

When I took a train from Glasgow to England, another from England to Harwich, when I crossed the Channel to Hoek van Holland, and when I boarded the third train from the Netherlands to West Berlin (the same train would eventually end in Moscow), I read a book that my friend lent to me: it was about travelling in Europe on a budget.

I learned, as that train sped through West Germany, that Berlin was one of the most-expensive cities in Europe. It was also the most difficult in which to find accommodation. It was suggested, in this guide, that you reserve a room at least a month in advance.

And here I was, on a train, bound for this fascinating, Cold-War-torn city, with no idea about where I was going to stay.

Inexperience is why I failed to do research before I left home or Glasgow. And once again, inexperience is what kept me from fully reading rules about travelling to and from East Berlin until it was too late.

In the travel brochure that I acquired in Europacentre, it warned me that I would have to convert West German marks into the East German currency, which I had, in fact, read before I entered the Russian sector. I also knew I wasn't permitted to bring any of that currency back into the West. I kept one tiny paper note in my pocket, prepared to surrender it at the border. The coins that were tucked in my shoes, however, were coming back with me.

But what the brochure also told me was that any recording equipment was strictly prohibited (cameras excepted). Yet, in my camera bag was a micro-cassette recorder, and it was full of notes.

Notes about the final scene of my novel, The Spy's The Limit, in which the plot of moving defectors from the East into the West. Notes of double agents that Roland had met, in East Berlin. Notes about a government leak. Notes about Roland, the spy, which were written in first-person prose: in other words, my voice, using I, in relation to suspicious activity.

I could see what was coming: I would show my passport, describe my activities in East Berlin to the customs officer. He would inspect my camera bag and find the tape recorder. He would bring me into an interrogation room. He would play the tape, hear my notes. I would be searched. The coins in my shoes would be found.

I would be taken out to the Berlin Wall and shot as a spy.

But the officer took my Canadian passport, studied the page with my photo, studied my face. He took the slip of paper that had been placed in it when I first passed through this point. He stamped it, kept it, handed back my passport, and called the next person in line.

It wasn't until I was past the American hut that I started to tremble. Then laugh. Then catch my breath.

And then, I thought that maybe... just maybe... I could be Roland Axam. Maybe, in that time in East Berlin, Roland Axam was truly born.