Watching you watching us...

July 3, 2023

NEUE DARCHAU - Antonia huddles over a mug of coffee. The morning is cold, the coffee hot and welcome.

"It brings balm to the soul," she sighs. "Do you know that expression?"

Down in Bavaria, she says, her family barely knew about the DDR.

"Well, we knew," she corrects herself, "but it was too far away to be important."

Antonia looks too slender to carry her backpack. She is taking time off from being an expert in heat loss from buildings to walk a northern section of the Compostelle trail that runs to Santiago. Except that she is going in the opposite direction, so that every morning she has to translate her guidebook to south-north.

Our first sight of the internal border of which Antonia's family knew little was a large brown sign on which was printed a map of Europe and a celebration of just when that part of Germany had returned to a united Europe.

Large brown signs celebrate villages' return to a united Germany and Europe. The dates and times differ

Other than that, the only sign for the first hours was an absence of sign. Such had become the sad state of the workers' paradise that the DDR had moved thousands of people from within five kilometres of the border. The land between the fence and their new homes was left unattended, so that it became a linear nature reserve. And that is how it has stayed, although now with official status.

The few roads pass to an orchestra of birdsong and unidentifiable rustling. Decades of tension and near-warfare have become a ribbon of peace.

The border ran along the Elbe, a river as long as the Loire. The five-kilometre strip was on the east. There wasn't much more on the other bank, either, because few people had reason to approach a barrier they couldn't cross.

Ferries now unite East and West Germany, but the border returns when they stop at 9pm

The barrier continues, although in a different form. The shallow ferries that began crossing the Elbe when Germany reunited all stop at 9pm. There are few of them, and bridges are still rarer. The result is a twilight curfew that keeps the communities separated.

We have been riding the top of a flood wall and, at times, on slabs of holed concrete that the East Germans laid as a road to service the watchtowers. The riding has been uneventful since there are empty fields to the horizon on our left and the river to the right. We read once that the crows on one side of the river are paler than those on the other, although that seems to be taking political separation too far.

The riverside road is closed now to all but cyclists and walkers. The barbed wire has gone, of course, and so have the minefields. Our first confirmation of the border came not on the dyke but a road through the nature reserve forest. A stubby control post and the remnants of metal poles marked where traffic once stopped to move across the border. Enough history and memory has passed for the tower to have become advertising for the café and museum beside it. It seems sacrilegious but then it's their history, their country, and not mine.

Border guards watched not only for escapees from their own side but for threats from the imperialist army on the other

The real thing came maybe half an hour later. Watchtowers stood every five kilometres. Most have gone but a few remain, empty, windblown places with the charm of factory chimneys or prison guard posts (which in reality they were).

From there, guards patrolled in pairs. Most were conscripts, or at any rate young, and their adherence to the communist dream couldn't be guaranteed at recruitment school. Therefore they went out in twos, each keeping an eye on the other.

Windows in the towers looked in all directions. Guards could watch for escapees on one side and imperialist troop or tank movements on the other. And on that other bank, the West built its own towers to see what the communists were up to on their own side.

Tension, though, hasn't ended. It has simply gone elsewhere. We have made friends tonight, so far as language will allow, with a cycle-tourist from Syria.

It was a troubled part of the world, we observed. We ask if he ever went back.

"No," he says with a quiet laugh.

"Would you like to?"

"No. I can't. My father makes politics in Syria and for that reason I cannot go back."

"Not yet anyway," we suggest optimistically.

"No, not yet. Perhaps never."

And so he stays in Germany, learning not just the language but social work.

"It is good to be useful," he says.

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