by Debby Pattiz
When The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, I was stranded 1,500 miles from the action. I’d moved to Lisbon to teach English after graduating from Brown in 1989. And, overnight, the world changed. Just like that, I was able to return to Rostock, East Germany—the port city on the Baltic Sea where I’d spent a semester abroad in 1988.
When I left Rostock back in the summer of ‘88, my heart broke. I didn’t know if I’d ever see my East German friends and “family” again. But now, unbelievably I could. So when winter vacation finally arrived in December 1989, I borrowed a long, red wool coat and hopped the first train out of Portugal. I chugged my way east and north through rain, sleet, and snow via Madrid, Paris, and Munich to Berlin. As you can see from this photo, my euphoria during that days-long train ride was difficult to contain.
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