Escaping East Germany

I saw The Lives of Others yesterday and I highly recommend it. Especially for people who are interested in the Cold War Era and Eastern Europe and all the shenanigans that went on over there. It's very sad and moving.

Before seeing the movie, I went for a haircut. My hairdresser, who I've known for 10 years or so, was born in East Germany. He's a huge movie buff, so I asked him if he'd seen the movie. He hadn't, and was keen to do so, but was also apprehensive about seeing it.

He then proceeded to tell me about the day he packed his bags, at age 17, and crossed over to the West. It was rivetting. I even forgot he was cutting my hair as he talked. Fortunately for me, he didn't forget what he was doing.

He "escaped" before the Wall went up. He hates using the word escape but he doesn't have a better word for it. At the time, it was not so dangerous to go to the West, i.e. nobody shot at you. He packed a suitcase, bought a train ticket for Berlin and that was that. It was easy, if by easy you mean that all you are doing is leaving your family, your friends, your schoolmates, your co-workers and everybody you know and the only place you've ever lived to go to an unknown destination where you don't know a soul and have no idea what you will do when you get there. And you face the possibility that you'll never be allowed back and will never see any of these people ever again. But nobody shoots at you. So it's easy.

I asked him if he just decided suddenly to leave one day. He said no. He was a self-proclaimed bullshitter who spent all his time bragging about how was going to go to the West one of these days. He said, if you say it for too long and you never do it, eventually you become a joke. So I knew I had to actually do it or I'd be laughed at. That's reason enough for a 17-year-old.

He said on the day Joseph Stalin died all the girls in his class were crying and he said "what the hell are you crying for that old man for?" I'm amazed he ever got out of there.

This is a man who lives for 1) gambling and 2) women. I suspect in his youth those two priorities may have been reversed, but he's in his 60s now, and lives for blackjack before babes. He's very charming and I can just imagine what he must've been like 30 or 40 years ago. What could a guy like him do in East Germany? Other than get in trouble.

Actually, he said that if he had stayed, he would've joined the Party and worked his way up. Because he wanted to have the biggest apartment and the nicest stuff. That's why everybody joined the Party. True ideologues were very rare.

He said that back in the GDR he never could've spoken to me, as one of his clients, the way he does. Way too dangerous. He said, I know you and I've known you for a long time, but I don't really know you. I know what he means.

Aren't we lucky to grown up in places where we don't have to worry if the guy next door, or the mailman, or the bus driver, or the grocery clerk, is reporting back to the government on any offhand flippant comment we might make. What an insane system.

If this kind of stuff interests you, you have to see The Lives of Others.

All systems eventually fail. Just before I left, we discussed how much time capitalism has left before it too goes sucking down the drain of history. I'm more optimistic than he is. I think we still have a few decades left, he thinks the end is coming must sooner. How pessimistic. I chalk that up to his East German upbringing.