It's been 20 years. As you look through the news sites and newspapers there are many reflections of this 20 year anniversary: 20 years ago the Wall came down in Berlin.
For me, this is a very special anniversary, the Wall plays a role and German history of the 20th century plays a role.
20 years ago I met my friend Marie. This weekend is our 20th anniversary.
20 years ago we moved back to Germany, I was a teenager in a new and relatively foreign country. A country I had spent summers in and my early childhood. A country I was getting to know as it was changing. All throughout the summer we watched the news reports of the Iron Curtain rusting, the famous images of the Hungarian border police taking wire cutters to the fence. East Germans in the West German embassy in Prague. The Foreign Minister on the balcony of the embassy telling them they would be allowed to travel to West Germany that day, the cheers, the tears. It brought shivers down my spine when I traveled to Prague years later and saw the German Embassy...
20 years ago I was the new kid in a new school. The French class was going to Paris on an exchange. I wasn't going to be going, since this had been organized the year before. Then someone got sick and I got a spot on the exchange at the last minute.
This exchange was part of the German-French friendship programme started after World War II. Adenauer and de Gaulle decided to start exchanging young people in a friendship programme so that these two nations who had been at war for too long would finally get to know each other, build friendships and never go to war against each other again.
The beginning of November is a delicate time in German and European history: November 11, 1918 is of course Armistice Day, the day a ceasefire was signed between the Allies and Germany in a railway car in the woods. A day that ended the most horrible bloodshed and war atrocity seen in Europe to that day. Whole stretches of land littered with the corpses of dead soldiers. November 9, 1938 was the Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass when Nazi Germany showed its brutal face in a large-scale anti-Jewish pogrom. A year later the beginning of World War II which saw my own grandfather marching into France as a foot soldier in the German army.
So, there I was 20 years ago on my way to France, to make a friend so that none of this would ever happen again.
We all came into the school the exchange was with and the two teachers read names from their lists: one French student and one German student. I was the last one on the list, as was Marie, and we were matched.
I remember coming into Marie's house for the first time: the smell of her father's pipe, the books everywhere, the old furniture, and most of all the people. I immediately felt comfortable and at home. For the first dinner her mother had made a feast of French specialties, some to test the sensitivities of the German exchange student like fresh sea urchin. I loved the sea urchin - I had spent the previous summer in Sardenia and ate them fresh out of the ocean.
They showed me around Paris. We went to Place des Vosges - still one of my favourite places in Paris. We walked all over town, Musee d'Orsay, Marais, Rive Gauche, Notre Dame, Quartier Latin... This set the start of my love for this city, a city I would return to many times to visit my friends. And every visit would bring me back to Place des Vosges...
I have so many wonderful memories of Paris, and they are all linked to Marie: Driving through the city at night with big operatic or orchestral music coming out of the speakers, making Paris the stage of our very own story. Or years earlier, the two of us walking through the city and having hot chocolate in a cafe on the Place St. Michel.
Marie and I got along perfectly right away. We had the same love for novels, for music. and we somehow connected, in a way that is difficult to put into words. It's like we had - and still have - this implicit understanding of each other.
So there I was, 20 years ago in Paris and meanwhile in Berlin, the Wall came down. I remember sitting with Marie and her family in front of the TV and seeing people dancing on the Wall, Trabant cars driving across to West Berlin.
Marie's father opened a bottle of champagne and we toasted to freedom.
Marie and I spent every summer together throughout high school and well into university. We would go to the French Alps with Marie's family. Many beautiful days of hikes and long conversations at night. I remember one night when we brought our down duvets outside onto the Alpine meadow and watched for shooting stars.
We talked about love, a romantic love that sweeps you off your feet. We talked about our futures, our dreams. We did a lot of dreaming together in those summers. We watched each other as we fell in love, had our hearts broken, found love again... We made our career choices, went to university... We danced at each other's weddings, her children were my flower girls. And throughout this time we wrote each other letters and made time to see each other whenever we could.
Despite the fact the we are so far apart now, we are still incredibly close. When we see each other, we immediately connect, we are like family. Our families have found friendship as well: Last spring, before Anouk was born, we all got together in Weidingen: Marie and her husband and children, her parents, my parents, my sisters, my family. A beautiful big reunion of our two families. There we were all sharing this wonderful time together, speaking German, French, Italian and English to communicate.
Who would have thought that this would ever happen after World War II when the German-French friendship programme was started and who would have thought that this would happen when in a high school gym our names were called out and we were matched.
As a tribute to our friendship, I made my first big quilt for Marie. The pattern is called "Starry Night" and when I saw it I had to think of the summer night in the Alps when we were huddled in our duvets and watched the shooting stars. The colours remind me of Marie. I hope that it will got well into their new house. Every stitch, it seems, a memory of the last 20 years together.
Thank you Marie, for being my friend.
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