July 8, 2023
The day I drove my dad's car across the border
| Heart | 2 | Comment | 0 | Link |
BERGEN-a-d-DAMME - Jaap laughs. He's a fit-looking man in his 60s who should be organising a get-together at the community centre but prefers to sit with us. His wife has just served us cold drinks and ice cream with strawberries.
"Pay whatever you think it's worth," she says.
The get-together's first arrivals are out in the sun, around a wooden table and laughing and drinking beer and occasionally calling for more.
We are about a kilometre from the line of the fence, on the westward side. Our campground is even nearer. We have wandered out in the hope of a drink.
"I remember when I was 18," Jaap says. He laughs. "I had my driving licence for the first time and I was allowed to drive my grandparents into the East to see members of the family.
| Heart | 6 | Comment | 0 | Link |
"We could go into the East - this was an official crossing, you see - if we had the proper visa and we paid. It was like a zoo, except that we were paying to see people.
"And when we crossed the first checkpoint, they said to leave the car and wait in a special room. And I could see them looking under the car with mirrors, and then at the engine, and then they took out everything that came loose - the seats, the mirrors, everything.
"And I thought, 'My poor father - that's his car!'
"And my grandparents didn't understand. They thought we had done something, something wrong."
Back then, he said, his impression of the East was that everything was grey, that the houses were small. Now, he says, he can't see the difference.
"And those on the East also had false impressions. People used to think that we had gold taps in the bathroom. They thought we went on holiday to Majorca all the time. But my father was a carpenter. He never went to Majorca or anywhere else in his life."
Some differences persist, though.
"These days, you can't tell if someone comes from the East or the West. Except that, I meet friends to play guitars and we have a few beers and then people open up and speak their mind. And then, people who grew up in the East, sometimes someone will suggest something, perhaps something that shouldn't be done, and then you see the signs of the East. They still have those old fears, the sense of rules."
It's more marked with people in the generation before his, he says. "They still have the thought that maybe they're being watched, spied on. But, honestly, not everyone in the East was in the Stasi."
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 9 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |