Inauguration Day in Berlin
It was a weird vibe
We didn’t consciously plan to be in Germany for Trump’s second inauguration. It just worked out that way, a quirk of our schedules. When we realized that we would in fact be in Berlin on January 20th, my girlfriend joked maybe we could seek asylum.
I’d never been to Germany before. I guess I’d kept nursing a grudge born in the afternoon Hebrew School sessions of my Anne Frank-forward reform-Jewish childhood. But my best friend was in Berlin on a research grant and invited us to visit. So while Trump and his cronies shuffled around to bar mitzvah staple “YMCA” (not a gay anthem, apparently!) at the pre-inauguration rally, we staggered, jet-lagged, to a co-ed bathhouse in Kreuzberg.
First thing on our Monday agenda was a Berlin Underworld tour, where a charismatic tour guide led us through some of the tunnels beneath the Berlin Wall that people used to escape. He broke down Berlin 101 for those of us with only hazy 1980s childhood memories of divided Germany: After WWII, Germany was divvied up and occupied by the conquering forces. The US poured resources into West Berlin, and the USSR siphoned resources out of East Berlin, installing the socialist DDR government (GDR to us English-speakers).
Nearly overnight, East Berlin became a prison, with border guards given orders to shoot anyone trying to pass into West Berlin, even if they were just trying to visit the friends or family who a few days earlier had been neighbors. The DDR blocked off the city’s subway tunnels, installing guards to make sure no one was using the tunnels to sneak from West Berlin to East Berlin. “Why didn’t the guard system work very well?” the tour guide prompted the crowd.
“They could be bribed?” someone guessed.
He nodded while saying no, like a stern school teacher. “They escaped themselves,” he said. “The DDR had to make adjustments.” He directed our attention to a photograph of guards chained to their outposts.
We learned about how, as the wall became more fortified, people snuck through the sewers, preferring to literally swim through shit than to stay in their suddenly oppressive regime. A question that came up a lot was some iteration of: Wasn’t it telling that people hated the DDR so much they would risk their life to escape? If nothing else, wasn’t that bad PR? The tour guide answered this by widening his eyes and nodding meaningfully.
Eventually, he told us, people started to dig their own tunnels. “Mostly young men,” he explained, “because you know, young men can be stupid enough to be brave.” I felt an uncharacteristic surge of love for stupid, brave men.
We emerged blinking into the weak January sunlight.
“Would I be brave?” I kept asking. “If things were so scary?”
My girlfriend’s German friend said, “You probably would, if you had to be.”
After the tour, we stopped for coffee and cake at a nearby cafe, me and my girlfriend and my best friend, three queer women living our lives so freely that we’d taken this rather spontaneous trip to Europe because we felt like it. I checked the New York Times on my phone. “Oh god,” I said. “That’s right, he’s being inaugurated.” We all groaned, and changed the subject.
The next thing on the agenda that day was the DDR Museum, an oddly whimsical exhibition tucked into the bank of the River Spree, across from the Berlin Cathedral, a giant Baroque structure that somehow survived Allied bombing in one of those unscathed bits of Berlin that looks like any European city.
The museum breaks down the different aspects of daily life in East Berlin, including a replica of a typical apartment. I have to admit this really backfired for us, freelance creatives from New York City. “Wait, everyone was given a job? With benefits?” we marveled. “There was universal childcare? Everyone had a cute little apartment? And then they took vacations to nude beaches on the Baltic Sea?” I read that people in East Berlin had more sex than people in West Berlin, and contraception was readily available for women. I mean, we got that it was generally a bad scene, but still.
We kept taking pictures of the cute 60s wallpaper and fixtures. A plaque in the apartment replica explained that since so many things were so shitty (I’m paraphrasing), people retreated into coziness, focusing on making their living spaces as cozy and welcoming as they could. “Maybe coziness is what will get us through the next four years,” my best friend said, and we both laughed nervously.
It was a busy time for us, but things were busier stateside: Our country’s new president signed a stack of executive orders, promised mass deportations and more border barriers at the US-Mexico border, moved to end birthright citizenship, withdrew the US from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, ordered the dismantling of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, pardoned members of extremist groups, and established a policy of “recognizing two sexes,” targeting transgender and LGBTQ+ Americans. His unelected advisor gave a Nazi salute.
Back in Berlin, it was date night. After dinner at the lush Tajikistan Tearoom, my girlfriend and I made our way to a queer bar called the Tipsy Bear in Prenzlauer Berg, a neighborhood that during the occupation was home to East Berlin’s counterculture of activists, artists, and the gay community. A sign at the bar read in English: “Welcoming Environment for Everyone — If you are racist/sexist/homophobic/or an ASSHOLE, don’t come in.”
We ordered stiff drinks, tired from the day and the dribs of news we couldn’t stop peeking at our phones for. Soon the music began. It turned out there was a drag king show that night. We held hands in a crowd of queer people from all over, and watched painfully hot women in drag act out winking stories of machismo lotharios and foolish kings. I wanted to cry, especially during the finale, when the drag kings from each act got up on stage together for a rousing rendition of “YMCA,” a song I’ve never before been overjoyed to hear.
Did they know how much we needed this? Did they know what this meant in this moment for Americans? Or is it just a gay anthem, no matter what anyone says?
There in East Berlin, everyone danced and sang along.
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