Escape the East пассажир

 I was sipping on a cup of granulated sugar with about two tablespoons of actual coffee in it. A book recently boosted from the adult non-fiction section in one hand, and cigarette in the other. I was so entrenched in the pages I didn't  even notice the presence of the man who sat down across the table. "Good Book"  he said with a muffled voice. I glanced out the corner of my eye and was undecided if this was a question, a statement, and/or if it was worthy of a response. A beam of reflected light caught my eye, and that's when the I spotted the Omega Seamaster on his wrist. I turned my attention to the supposed Gentleman sitting across from me. I was reading "The Billion Dollar Spy" the book I acquired from my local library and asked if he had read it. He responded "Niet" with a thick slavic accent, "But I know the story." Unimpressed, I exhaled through my nose to show it, also, to clear my sinuses of the faint scent of rubbing alcohol.  Recently consumed Vodka was probably the source of this odor. At a glance,  I sized him up instantly with the usual prejudice we all posses, but won't admit to. A Dolce Bomber jacket with a bee and crown emblem on the breast. He had a tanned over face with a beard and hair that reminded me of the most interesting man alive. Dos Equis? Fingernails manicured to perfection but knuckles with the scars of a previous life. "What do you know of it?" I said with a shrug as I extinguished my marlboro in the ash tray and pushed the smoke out. He removed a parliament cigarette from a pack and spun the recessed filter on his lip a few times. When the man leaned back and placed a calf upon a knee, I noticed the familiar metal "LV"  linked on his moccasins. After his cigarette was lit, he set the S.T. Dupont Ligne on the table so I would notice the decadence. He probably paid two grand for that f****g lighter. That thought was interrupted when he began to speak:

  "Ze Stasi took my parents when I  was very young. I remember waiting for days after they were gone. I waited, and waited, and stuck around our home hoping for their return. I could not muster the courage to venture out of the house until the food was all but gone. That's when I began to roam the streets of East Berlin. Like a scavenger of the Serengeti I was trying to scrape out and existence in that city. However, it was only a matter of weeks, or maybe a few months that I remained in ze Eastern part of the city. If not for a stroke of luck, I would of remained in the East and I most likely would not be here to tell you this account. I had no one, and I had nothing. However, by divine intervention, I had a chance. An acquaintance of my father saw me foraging through a rubbage heap behind the vegetable market. He had nothing to give me, no food, and not a single ruble, but Mr. Deterling had a train. I do not know how Hari, as  my Papa called him, became the conductor of a train. These details are not important, the point is, he had a train. I was instructed to board the train at a very specific time and place. Mr. Deterling's family  and friends were all there, and we piled into the cart. I will never forget, it was the 5th of December, a cold f****g day. I was happy just to be out of the frost bitten wind that was howling across the platform. We chugged along slowly at first, and as I began to feel my fingers again, the train started to pick up speed. I pressed my face against the glass and I could see we were racing toward the Berlin Wall.
 I thought for sure we were going to die when I saw the huge wall approaching. Border guards were waving their arms, screaming and shouting, and pointing their Kalashnikovs at the train. Still we sped forward, forward, faster faster. As we approached the border, the East German guards did what all men do when faced with inevitability. They got the f**k out of the way.  We raced towards Berlin's border wall that split the city between the free and the oppressed. I could see each individual brick take shape as we got closer and closer. I braced myself for impact and a split second before we smashed into that wall, the train crossed a switch plate shifting us on to a forgotten stretch of track. The sharp turn pressed our bodies to walls and forced us to the ground. When gravity finally released its hold on us, I managed to shimmy up and press my face on the glass again. We had just coasted through the very last gap in the Berlin wall. Mr. Deterling had some how found the very last strip of train track in all of Berlin that went East to West unopposed. Of course, that very next day it was gone. The Eastern Regime tore up the track immediately and walled up that gap. It was a very big deal in the city. We broke free.  Even the newspapers called our little stunt "The Last Train to Freedom." It was glorious. Of course life moves on like a train, and many other people moved east to west, and back again since. But no one ever did it by commandeering a train. That was the beginning for me. That was the moment I arrived into this world. I still did not have a home. I still did not have food. I had niet, but I had arrived. This was the beginning of my story."


I was spell bound. The man didn't say another word. He checked the hands spinning on the blue dial of his watch, finished his espresso, and then he raised up, all in one motion. After he pushed his chair in,  he didn't say another word and left. I was speechless. Of course I checked the validity of his statement, the best one can "fact" check on the internet. It turns out there was train driven from East Berlin to escape to the West.

I also discovered that there were many other ingenious ways people crossed from the oppressive Eastern regime into the freedom of the West. There was a man stole a tank and crashed it into the wall. I don't think he made it, the tank didn't smash the wall as he expected. Another one rented a low riding corvette and slipped under the border crossing checkpoint. One man swam to freedom, and yet another used a zip line to cross over the wall. It is amazing what people will do to be free. However the most amazing part is that he probably paid two grand for that f****g lighter!

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