Seascape

Thirty years ago I was on an ex­press train. It was No­vem­ber 10 and I was about to have a front row view of his­tory, just as I sense is hap­pen­ing to me now.

The Hanover to Mu­nich ser­vice was on sched­ule, rac­ing through the West Ger­many coun­try­side as night fell. It should have been a five-hour jour­ney, but it wasn’t. I was not to sleep a wink that night.

I was there for long-planned meet­ings at news­pa­per of­fices in the two cities, a sched­ule set with no inkling of what was about to un­fold so quickly and rad­i­cally.

Word of the breach­ing of the Berlin Wall reached me while I was in Hanover. All the jour­nal­ists there feared that, in its death throes, the brit­tle regime of East Ger­many would turn mur­der­ous and re­in­force its bor­der two-fold. No­body pre­dicted what would hap­pen next.

The rail line skirted the bleak bor­der and at that point it stopped at a town sta­tion. The be­wil­dered West Ger­man pas­sen­gers pressed their faces to the win­dows. The plat­form was puls­ing with peo­ple rac­ing in all di­rec­tions, some des­per­ately try­ing to get on to the train.

One of the rail­way guards told me he had just come from his home, which was close to where the bor­der fence sliced across a for­mer Nazi au­to­bahn. No car had come along the mas­sive con­crete mo­tor­way for 44 years.

He said he had not slept. The pre­vi­ous day a hole had been cut through the wire and Tra­bant cars and peo­ple on foot were pour­ing West.

We pushed through the throng and he helped me find a young cou­ple who had just crossed the once deadly fron­tier. I of­fered to take them to the train’s restau­rant car­riage and buy them a meal.

For two hours they ate hun­grily and talked of their re­peated ef­forts to get to the West, of being chased and ar­rested on the Czech bor­der, of not dar­ing to bring their young child with them this time for fear of being de­tained or shot at again. They were try­ing to un­der­stand the mo­men­tous events un­fold­ing, as were we all.

I turned to look over my shoul­der. All the other trav­ellers in the din­ing car­riage, mostly West Ger­man busi­ness­men in dog-tooth suits and ex­pen­sive shoes, were crowd­ing in to lis­ten to these two strangers in cheap faded denim clothes.

I spent the rest of that night on the street, among a pop­u­la­tion wak­ing up to a dif­fer­ent world.

Within four days nearly five mil­lion East Ger­mans – a quar­ter of the pop­u­la­tion – poured into West Ger­many. In some places there were tail­backs reach­ing 66 kilo­me­tres with fam­i­lies queu­ing for 12 hours. The rail­way of­fi­cial told me his fam­ily and their neigh­bours had been pro­vid­ing drink and food.

I won­der what be­came of that young cou­ple in denim, and their child. Per­haps, such has been my train­ing as a re­search jour­nal­ist, I will try and trace them one day. It would be fas­ci­nat­ing to know, as it would the for­tunes of the Viet­namese fam­ily plucked from the South China sea and brought to Eng­land 10 years ear­lier. The fa­ther, so di­min­ished in a vast fake-leather jacket gifted by a char­ity, told a vivid story, just one among the many Viet­namese boat peo­ple, that was an­other way­point in my life.

Brave peo­ple. Res­olute.

It is al­ways vital to lis­ten, ask, talk, reg­is­ter, the faces and sto­ries, not just the num­bers. And it is a deep priv­i­lege. While on we forge, rid­ing the swell of the ever-chang­ing po­lit­i­cal seascape.