"In October 1987, my girlfriend, my nephew, and I succeeded in fleeing from East Germany. We sailed across the Baltic Sea by rubber dinghy from Ahrenshoop to Gedser on the Danish island of Falster.
In 1989, my girlfriend and I travelled to Berlin for the first time again for Christmas and the New Year. As soon as I was on the autobahn, taking the transit route to West Berlin, which I was now able to use without any danger, I felt this indescribable feeling. Was it triumph? Or joy? Or was it nostalgia at seeing those dilapidated villages again? Was it resentment that the Bonzen (Party bigwigs) were now allowed to visit the West, too?
I wanted to spend New Year’s Eve in Ahrenshoop, where I had ventured out onto the Baltic in a rubber dinghy more than two years earlier. We set off, hoping our West marks would help us find lodgings for the night. And that is exactly what happened. The director of an FDGB (Free German Trade Union Federation) holiday centre in Ahrenshoop, who still bore the Party emblem on his lapel, took us aside and furtively negotiated a price for two nights – in West marks, of course. He put us up in his own comfortable private home. He advised us to park the car a little ways off. He would prefer that, he explained rather awkwardly. Nobody needed to know that he was putting up guests from the West, he said. With that, I felt right 'at home' again...!
Our first outing took us to the place where Jeanette, Axel and I had hidden. I was determined to find traces and show Franziska everything there was to see. The countryside was covered in a fine layer of snow. After looking for a while in the thick shrubbery, I found the empty sparkling-wine bottles we had used to christen the boat. I recognised them immediately. And I found one of my rubber boots, too.
I then searched for the spot where we had held out in the cold, huddling there in the bushes until we could venture to flee, after the moon set. The bushes had grown since then. It was difficult for me to get my bearings. Suddenly, we found ourselves standing in front of our camp. It was overgrown with shrubs and bushes, and consequently hardly recognisable. I caught sight of the suitcase we had used to transport our boots and our capes. I had to hold back a rush of emotion.
Suddenly, I noticed a packet of tablets. I picked them up in amazement. Lo and behold, they were the very tablets I had bought in case we became seasick. While I was putting on my cape, I had stuck them in my pocket, so that I’d have them handy if we needed them. But somehow they had fallen out during all the excitement. I was unable to find them later on when we were in the boat, and the waves were getting higher and higher. And now I was holding them in my hand again... They were all I took with me as a souvenir. I left everything else lying there, to be reclaimed by nature – because someday I would go back there again. For me, this place will always be something very special."
Michael Löchelt (Hohenzethen)
