incendiarystory (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} incendiarystory) wrote,@ 2004-11-28 11:34:00 |
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Why Sleep When I'll Only Dream - CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Crossing Into The East Over The Invisible Wall Of Ideas
The city of Paris had faded rapidly from the vantage point of the window of the train. The buildings seemed to get generally smaller and smaller and the
train stations seemed to have less people waiting at them as the trip progressed east. The terrain from the window became more hilly with large vines seemingly bursting with grapes getting ready for the harvest coming up. These fields of vines, which she was amazed were right by the train tracks, would be broken up by vast patches of forest.
Everything seemed so tranquil in this land so close to Paris and yet worlds away. She knew there were tourists scurrying about the chateaus and guest houses in the small towns she passed, but it seemed like a region of France she might like to see at some time in the future. She might even want to settle there. Where was this France a couple of day ago?
As the scenery had become more tranquil, so did the thoughts in Emily's mind. She had still reviewed the events of the morning with Sandra and it had choked her up a couple of times but there were no more tears. She would just look out the window as the train shook mildly back and forth over the undulating terrain and see the workers in the field tilling the soil or the provincial children in their nice bonnets and shoes boarding the train for a ride east to visit relatives or even to travel to Germany with her. There were such proud looks on the faces of the mothers at their young daughters.
Emily sighed and thought of how much promise these children had. And she wondered if they would turn out like Sandra, every mother's nightmare or even like herself, an inner core of turmoil just waiting to explode. There was innocence there that had not yet been broken, had not been shattered.
There was no such innocence now as Emily stood in front of the sex museum right downstairs from her hostel in Berlin. Part of her thought that Scott
would be waiting for her as she got off the train. But, she knew that was asking too much. Even if he had gotten her message from the night before as soon as she had sent it, chances are there wasn't going to be a train from Warsaw to Berlin that would beat her here from Paris.
She had been disappointed to find out that Scott wasn't in Warsaw anymore, but had instead moved on to Prague. The first thing she had done on arriving in Berlin was check into the hostel and buy internet time at the computers within. When she saw that Scott not only would not be in Berlin the next morning but not until the morning after, she decided to make the best of her time alone.
Thinking back of her time in Paris, she realized that she should see some of the historic aspects of Berlin, as much as it pained her to follow any of that asshole Greg's advice. Now she began walking back to Berlin Zoo Station to catch the bus to take in the sights, gazing at the sex "museum" cynically while she passed it on the way. The check-in desk had given her a map and the advice to take the "Linie 100" if she wanted a quick tour of the city.
She had printed out a list of things to do while at the internet cafe in Paris and now she had a way to do them. When the double decker bus pulled up, she paid her fare and was glad to hear a wash of people talking in different languages. She felt safe in the knowledge that she was a tourist and they were tourists. People who actually knew the country now seemed dangerous to her.
The bus took a twisting route through the old West Berlin. She marveled at its modernity. All of Germany seemed so modern and so industrialized compared to what had been in France. The buildings were all so square and modern and tell. She took comfort in this, it reminded her of home - this skyline could just as easily be in Chicago as they were in Berlin. But she knew she wasn't at home, she was still definitively in a foreign country. And this was a foreign country where she didn't even enjoy the benefit of speaking the language as she had in France. This thought alone worried her although speaking the language had not done her much good in the country she had just left.
As the bus continued east, the facades of the buildings began to get smaller and less ornate. It was as if they were in a different city. The former East Berlin, at least that's what she assumed it was looking at the dotted line on her map marking where the wall used to stand that the bus had now crossed over, was crafted so much differently than the former West Berlin. It had the feel of being stuck in a different time even though it had been 14 years since the wall was no longer and impediment to the cities
merging.
This invisible line, while still on the maps shouldn't have prevented the two cultures in one city from merging, but somehow it did. The planned bloc housing still stood, virtually unchanged by progress with the exception of a few billboards that now graced or sullied them. The people on the street even seemed like they were dressed differently. As opposed to the three piece suits of those West Berliner running to the train station after work, these were the jeans and t-shirt crowd who labored in the factories or even cleaned the floors in the western half of the city.
She could see the skeletons of construction planks moving up the sides of the building to renovate them and even the bulldozers and cranes with wrecking balls ready to remove them, but even this seemed to be frozen in time.
But what really differentiated everything was the construction. Everything in the East seemed to be brick as opposed to the steel and glass that was the West. Everything still seemed to echo in the steps of the apparatchik and unwilling participants who used to occupy these buildings. She wondered what it must be like to work in them today knowing that the labors you currently put in were once done by someone with different goals in mind.
She felt as though the illusions she once had of the Eastern Bloc were shattered seeing the ghosts of East Berlin. Emily had always defended the system in the former communist sphere of influence. Not in Russia proper or in a country like Romania where the respective dictators throughout the procession of years had ruled with iron fists to match the curtain. But, she had always cited the more "enlightened" regimes like Yugoslavia and East Germany as an alternative to the materialism of the west.
When the wall had fallen and the people streamed to the western parts of Berlin, she had always thought it had just been to engage in the process of buying unnecessary things. But, now, looking at the run down mess that still existed where East Germany had once been, she realized that it wasn't just for the so-called freedom that people had risked their lives to achieve, it was in a hope of achieving a life where the living standards could meet the needs of their families.
If Scott ever did laugh at his political views behind her back as Sandra had claimed, a fact that Emily still doubted, maybe he had been right. If this was the utopian ideal that she had aspired to, where everyone was equally suffering even years later than she was probably wrong.
She left the bus at the last stop, the Alexanderplatz and began to walk around the little square that surrounded the statue the looked like the map of an atom from high school. She followed the crowds back west as they looked wide eyed up into the air at the Fernsehturm, a giant pillar with a ball on top that looked like an observation deck at an amusement park.
Emily asked the man who was standing next to her, "what was this used for?"
He didn't respond at first, still staring nearly straight up. Then he looked down and in an accented English said, "was old broadcast tower for East German television. Communists put up to scare West Berliners into remembering they were surrounded by east. Was supposed to symbolize hope and prosperity but even we in Munich knew what was for. But we show them. Now inside is fine restaurant and people can go to top and see all of West. They not let them do during communism for fear they want lifestyle."
Emily politely thanked him but she was amazed at the hostility in his voice when talking about the former East German government and the contempt in his voice when talking about the former East German people.
She guessed she couldn't blame him because he was as much raised in a system in a system in West Germany to hate the East as so many East Germans were raised to hate the West. But so far she was inclined to agree with him to a point. She didn't hate this area for its poverty but she did feel sorry for it and it saddened her that in this one city, in this one country, could be two different worlds that still could not see eye-to-eye.
These two groups of people, separated artificially could really not be that much different, they were all Germans. Why could they somehow not manage to reconcile?
Chapter Word Count: 1622
Daily Word Count: 3213
Total Word Count: 60820
The city of Paris had faded rapidly from the vantage point of the window of the train. The buildings seemed to get generally smaller and smaller and the
train stations seemed to have less people waiting at them as the trip progressed east. The terrain from the window became more hilly with large vines seemingly bursting with grapes getting ready for the harvest coming up. These fields of vines, which she was amazed were right by the train tracks, would be broken up by vast patches of forest.
Everything seemed so tranquil in this land so close to Paris and yet worlds away. She knew there were tourists scurrying about the chateaus and guest houses in the small towns she passed, but it seemed like a region of France she might like to see at some time in the future. She might even want to settle there. Where was this France a couple of day ago?
As the scenery had become more tranquil, so did the thoughts in Emily's mind. She had still reviewed the events of the morning with Sandra and it had choked her up a couple of times but there were no more tears. She would just look out the window as the train shook mildly back and forth over the undulating terrain and see the workers in the field tilling the soil or the provincial children in their nice bonnets and shoes boarding the train for a ride east to visit relatives or even to travel to Germany with her. There were such proud looks on the faces of the mothers at their young daughters.
Emily sighed and thought of how much promise these children had. And she wondered if they would turn out like Sandra, every mother's nightmare or even like herself, an inner core of turmoil just waiting to explode. There was innocence there that had not yet been broken, had not been shattered.
There was no such innocence now as Emily stood in front of the sex museum right downstairs from her hostel in Berlin. Part of her thought that Scott
would be waiting for her as she got off the train. But, she knew that was asking too much. Even if he had gotten her message from the night before as soon as she had sent it, chances are there wasn't going to be a train from Warsaw to Berlin that would beat her here from Paris.
She had been disappointed to find out that Scott wasn't in Warsaw anymore, but had instead moved on to Prague. The first thing she had done on arriving in Berlin was check into the hostel and buy internet time at the computers within. When she saw that Scott not only would not be in Berlin the next morning but not until the morning after, she decided to make the best of her time alone.
Thinking back of her time in Paris, she realized that she should see some of the historic aspects of Berlin, as much as it pained her to follow any of that asshole Greg's advice. Now she began walking back to Berlin Zoo Station to catch the bus to take in the sights, gazing at the sex "museum" cynically while she passed it on the way. The check-in desk had given her a map and the advice to take the "Linie 100" if she wanted a quick tour of the city.
She had printed out a list of things to do while at the internet cafe in Paris and now she had a way to do them. When the double decker bus pulled up, she paid her fare and was glad to hear a wash of people talking in different languages. She felt safe in the knowledge that she was a tourist and they were tourists. People who actually knew the country now seemed dangerous to her.
The bus took a twisting route through the old West Berlin. She marveled at its modernity. All of Germany seemed so modern and so industrialized compared to what had been in France. The buildings were all so square and modern and tell. She took comfort in this, it reminded her of home - this skyline could just as easily be in Chicago as they were in Berlin. But she knew she wasn't at home, she was still definitively in a foreign country. And this was a foreign country where she didn't even enjoy the benefit of speaking the language as she had in France. This thought alone worried her although speaking the language had not done her much good in the country she had just left.
As the bus continued east, the facades of the buildings began to get smaller and less ornate. It was as if they were in a different city. The former East Berlin, at least that's what she assumed it was looking at the dotted line on her map marking where the wall used to stand that the bus had now crossed over, was crafted so much differently than the former West Berlin. It had the feel of being stuck in a different time even though it had been 14 years since the wall was no longer and impediment to the cities
merging.
This invisible line, while still on the maps shouldn't have prevented the two cultures in one city from merging, but somehow it did. The planned bloc housing still stood, virtually unchanged by progress with the exception of a few billboards that now graced or sullied them. The people on the street even seemed like they were dressed differently. As opposed to the three piece suits of those West Berliner running to the train station after work, these were the jeans and t-shirt crowd who labored in the factories or even cleaned the floors in the western half of the city.
She could see the skeletons of construction planks moving up the sides of the building to renovate them and even the bulldozers and cranes with wrecking balls ready to remove them, but even this seemed to be frozen in time.
But what really differentiated everything was the construction. Everything in the East seemed to be brick as opposed to the steel and glass that was the West. Everything still seemed to echo in the steps of the apparatchik and unwilling participants who used to occupy these buildings. She wondered what it must be like to work in them today knowing that the labors you currently put in were once done by someone with different goals in mind.
She felt as though the illusions she once had of the Eastern Bloc were shattered seeing the ghosts of East Berlin. Emily had always defended the system in the former communist sphere of influence. Not in Russia proper or in a country like Romania where the respective dictators throughout the procession of years had ruled with iron fists to match the curtain. But, she had always cited the more "enlightened" regimes like Yugoslavia and East Germany as an alternative to the materialism of the west.
When the wall had fallen and the people streamed to the western parts of Berlin, she had always thought it had just been to engage in the process of buying unnecessary things. But, now, looking at the run down mess that still existed where East Germany had once been, she realized that it wasn't just for the so-called freedom that people had risked their lives to achieve, it was in a hope of achieving a life where the living standards could meet the needs of their families.
If Scott ever did laugh at his political views behind her back as Sandra had claimed, a fact that Emily still doubted, maybe he had been right. If this was the utopian ideal that she had aspired to, where everyone was equally suffering even years later than she was probably wrong.
She left the bus at the last stop, the Alexanderplatz and began to walk around the little square that surrounded the statue the looked like the map of an atom from high school. She followed the crowds back west as they looked wide eyed up into the air at the Fernsehturm, a giant pillar with a ball on top that looked like an observation deck at an amusement park.
Emily asked the man who was standing next to her, "what was this used for?"
He didn't respond at first, still staring nearly straight up. Then he looked down and in an accented English said, "was old broadcast tower for East German television. Communists put up to scare West Berliners into remembering they were surrounded by east. Was supposed to symbolize hope and prosperity but even we in Munich knew what was for. But we show them. Now inside is fine restaurant and people can go to top and see all of West. They not let them do during communism for fear they want lifestyle."
Emily politely thanked him but she was amazed at the hostility in his voice when talking about the former East German government and the contempt in his voice when talking about the former East German people.
She guessed she couldn't blame him because he was as much raised in a system in a system in West Germany to hate the East as so many East Germans were raised to hate the West. But so far she was inclined to agree with him to a point. She didn't hate this area for its poverty but she did feel sorry for it and it saddened her that in this one city, in this one country, could be two different worlds that still could not see eye-to-eye.
These two groups of people, separated artificially could really not be that much different, they were all Germans. Why could they somehow not manage to reconcile?
Chapter Word Count: 1622
Daily Word Count: 3213
Total Word Count: 60820
