Nix Hotel Savoy

We had to wait until nightfall for the military train to take us through the Soviet Zone to West Berlin. The border guards on the platform carried assault rifles and watched us closely. A few of them seemed a bit young, but they were all resolutely stony-faced, at the ready. This was no laughing matter.

We had been told that our compartment was to remain sealed for the entire length of the journey. As it turned out, “sealed” just meant the shades had to be kept down and the windows closed at all times.

It was July 1955. In the fall I would be a senior in high school, and my horizons didn’t extend much beyond South Pasadena. I’d occasionally glance at the Los Angeles Times, but mainly to check movie times and not world affairs. So it came as a surprise to me when my mother grew so agitated. “Bill, do you know where that is ?” she said to my father. “It’s 110 miles behind the Iron Curtain. One hundred ten miles! ”

I was involved in a variety of school activities: vice president of the student body, editor of the school paper, and member of the California Scholarship Federation and the French Club, the Cercle Français. So without giving it too much thought, I applied to the American Field Service for their summer exchange program. The program was new; no one from our school had ever gone.

My assumption was that if I were accepted, I’d be sent to France. I was good in French. Our French Club’s twenty questions team was bused to other schools in the area to compete. “Est-que c’est animal, végétal, ou minéral? ” We were the champions. Mme Tuttle was duly proud of us.

To my surprise the AFS accepted me. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to me that I’d actually be going; the idea had seemed too remote. When the paperwork arrived, I found I’d been placed with a family not in Paris or even Marseille or Lyon, but in West Berlin. “We can’t let him go! It’s just too far inside enemy terrain!” my mother insisted. “What if they have another blockade? Another airlift? What if there’s no food?” But for once my father prevailed. It would be the opportunity of a lifetime, he said. My father was enthusiastic; now I wasn’t so sure.

For Americans the Autobahn was verboten (and, in addition, it was often closed, even to West Germans, for “repairs”), and so here we were, thirty-six American students, traveling through the Soviet Zone by a night train. I was assigned a two-bunk compartment with a guy named Gary from Davenport, Iowa. I tried making small talk about how great this summer was going to be—more for my benefit than his; I really did want to do this, didn’t I?—but Gary just stood there, pressing his chin into the top bunk. He seemed uprooted and disoriented.

“Hey, Gary, Eric, what’re you guys up to?” Standing right outside our compartment was Paul Tate, flanked by five or six of his buddies. He was wearing only a pair of pajama bottoms, and I could smell strong German beer on his breath.

“Jeez, Tate,” Gary said to him, “what if one of the girls comes by and sees you like that?”

Tate lurched into our compartment. “Do you realize,” he said, his face right up against Gary’s, “that we’re doing just what the Russkis want? Sneaking ourselves through East Germany without so much as a peek at their dumbass country? Whaddaya say we try to fling open the old Iron Curtain?”

Before any of us could stop him, Paul Tate pushed up the shade, then yanked down the top half of the window. The countryside outside was softly moonlit, rural, and deserted as our train swept past it.

“You nuts or something?” Gary called out. “The one thing they told us not to do was unseal—”

“Gotta take a leak,” Tate announced. “So why not take a piss...