Motorcycles and Trabants....

It was about this time in the evening on Veterans Day 1989, which was celebrated on a Friday because November 11 fell on a Saturday. Kathy had arranged for one of her mega shopping trips to buy such things as baskets, porcelain, and crystal at shops and stores close to the Czechoslovakian border. My job was to drive our 'blueburb' of happiness, our shiny, blue Chevrolet suburban and to work my miracles at providing lunch from the various bakeries and butcher shops.

After a full day of shopping, we were on our way home on the autobahn on a poorly lit section between Nürnberg and Heilbronn. It was then that we noticed some dim taillights. Thinking it was another one of those German long-haul rigs, notoriously poorly lit, we began complaining and comparing it to similar, but much better lit, rigs on American highways. Amid snarl and gripe we realized that it was not a truck at all. Rather a motorcycle carrying a family and their luggage. It was a family speeding away as best they could from East Germany. Borders had just been opened in the last few hours. Then we began noticing similarly laden motorcycles and those strange little East German cars. The Trabant, often referred to as the worst car in the world. Some were simply left abandoned yards into West Germany. Those still on the highway were equally laden in proportion to their size. However if I had to choose between motorcycle and Trabant, I would have reluctantly chosen Trabant. From the traffic on that autobahn, it seemed as if the entire population of East Germany were moving to the west.

What I and the other occupants of the suburban were witnessing was a great escape. An escape now made so much easier and safer by the opening of the border between East and West. Those cars and motorcycles carried entire families and their belongings. We sat warmly ensconced in our comfortable car, laden not with needs but with luxuries as we witnessed these peoples' flight to freedom.

That is an evening forever indelibly etched in my memory. Later that month or perhaps later into the winter, I made a deal with some acquaintances and friends who had access to the wall in Berlin to bring me several small pieces. Unnecessary but cherished mementos of that time in history, a time never to be forgotten.