Steamy Windows

How I Spent the night with Tina Turner and Tore Down the Berlin Wall

Note to subscribers: This is a personal piece that popped into my head when I learned of Tina Turner’s recent passing. There is no economic analysis or investment strategy in the piece at all, which is why I have decided to park it in the Brain Dump section of the site, rather than send it to your email inbox. I hope you enjoy.

I wrote about the Berlin Wall once before, on the 40th anniversary of its fall. You can read my earlier post here, which contains a handy map showing how to find the tiny village in West Berlin where I lived as a student during the Cold War. It will help you understand why I despise autocrats, thugs, bullies, and totalitarian governments.

I Hated That Wall

The passing of Tina Turner this week brought back a memory lodged deep in my brain—Tina Turner screaming “Steamy Windows” through the earphones of my Sony Walkman as I flew over the Berlin Wall.

Here’s the setup. On the morning of November 9, 1989, I had just completed a lecture to an Institutional Investor audience in Vienna when I learned that students in West Berlin had just torn down the first 12 foot tall concrete section of the wall. I had lived 200 meters from that unspeakable wall as a college student. Being an action figure, I threw my clothes into my bag, went straight to the airport, and scored a seat on the first flight to West Berlin—a DC-3 that had rolled off the assembly line during WWII, four years before I was born.

Two hours later, we were on final approach to land at Tempelhof Airport. I looked out the window and saw that we were no more than a few hundred feet above the snowy ground flying over the barren strip of no-man’s land that separated East Germany from West Berlin.

This far from the city center, there was no actual wall. Instead, there was a series of barriers to prevent anyone from escaping. Starting from the East, there were electrified fences, then rows of steel barriers to stop cars and trucks from crashing their way through to the wall, roughly positioned like the graphic above. Than a mine field and a string of floodlights. Then guard towers every 50 meters, with big ugly machine guns. Each tower was manned by two armed guards that rotated assignments every night so the same two guards would never work together two days in a row. Then a deep ditch and finally another tall chain fence topped with concertina wire.

After we landed at Tempelhof—the airport that had used for the Berlin airlift—I climbed into a taxi, bought a huge hammer at the first hardware store we passed on the way downtown, and joined the hundreds of other people pounding holes in a 12 foot tall concrete wall. We worked at it all night and had made huge gaps in the wall by morning. There were armed soldiers every few feet along the other side of the wall, of course. They were close enough to talk with to through the holes in the wall. What I remember most was how embarrassed the East German guard looked standing on the other side of the wall and how awkward I felt for putting him in such an embarrassing position. I had heard stories about other guards climbing through the gaps to escape to the west but our guy just stood looking at us through the hole.

Tina stuck with me that night—she’s that kind of gal. I know she would have liked to be there with us hacking at the wall. No one knew the value of regaining their freedom more than Tina. There is plenty more to tell you about my Berlin adventures but I will save that for another time.

Dr. John