30 in 30 No. 9 – Mike Does We Gotta Get Out of This Place by Eric Burdon and The Animals

Music

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. When my uncle was there that night, the background music that seemed to be blaring on the street was “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” by Eric Burdon and the Animals. #covember

As my uncle Philip reported in an email to me, “During this time period, about September through November of 1989 Brenda was working on a project with IBM Vienna. She was spending a great deal of time there and in another IBM facility near Stuttgart. I was traveling there often, sometimes for my own professional reasons.

“In late September we took the train from Vienna (I keep trying to type Wein!) to Budapest for one of my conferences. When we crossed the border a small army of 14 year old border guards, who didn’t even need to shave yet, with AK47s came on the train, took everyone’s papers and disappeared for some time.

“There were lots of other happenings in Budapest that made the air seem rife with excitement. For example, we had a room in the “Heelton” that overlooked the Danube and the Hungarian Parliament building (a replica of the Christopher Wrenn Parliament building in London) beyond. That building burned all of its lights that night; little did we know that their parliament was addressing opening their own border, albeit somewhat quietly. At any rate, the upshot was that when we returned to Vienna, there was no border crossing!

“Fast forward to early November… We heard on the radio (much more common information source in Europe) that something was afoot in Germany. I decided to go to Berlin, though Brenda said she would rather not. I stayed in the Savoy Hotel near the Zoo in the heart of Berlin. During the first night there was much noise in the street. I walked to Checkpoint Charlie and there were literally hordes of East Germans streaming through the gates. The next day I went back through the same US checkpoint so I could have my passport stamped. I wandered through the clearly dismal Eastern sector and returned that evening. Checkpoint Charlie had been summarily towed away and there was no official crossing left.”

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