A penpal on the other side

I had a penpal on the other side of the Wall.

Early ’70s. The Cold War was still very cold. With no end in sight. Ever. And I had a penpal in East Berlin. In the capital of the German Democratic Republic. Aka the communist part of Germany, occupied/controlled by the Soviet Union since World War II. On the other side of the Berlin Wall.

It all came about in very random way.

I was at the train station in Malmö, Sweden, with 2 female friends, shooting scenes for a dramatic short film. (Super 8 sound — this is back in the days of real film.)

Somewhere between scenes, a 30-something woman approached us for assistance. She might have heard snippets of dialogue from our film (partly in German — I played a German student visiting a friend in Sweden, in addition to directing the film). Or maybe it was just that a 2 teen girls and a guy with a film camera looked harmless enough.

Either way, she asked if we spoke German. Which we all did. So no problem there. We proceeded to help her find her train to Gothenburg. And chatted with her while she waited for the train.

Before boarding, Hildegard (not her real name) thanked us for our help and gave us each a bottle of German beer. We’d learned that she was from Berlin. Cool. I had friends in Berlin and had visited there several times…