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Published: April 28th 2008
Beam me up
The tallest radome.
Deserted, in ruins, creepy.I have always trusted my neighbors.
You?
In childhood, they became my family.
At college, perhaps at 3am I had to knock on the ceiling or floor to quiet them down, but it was all love otherwise.
At 18th & T, the gay guys chatted gardens and cuisine with me.
In Pavia, they laughed with me over Mexico’s tendency to adopt new families.
On East 2nd Street in Brooklyn, we cozied up on couches to watch films or talk art, took care of one another’s pets, bbq’d regularly and shared urban living secrets.
In Senegal, well, there’s nothing you don’t share by proximity.
Here at Boetticherstrasse, I’ve already had tea with several neighbors, am teaching some of their kids, and got taken on a full day excursion today.
Note to self: when visiting a Cold War espionage site, always go with the computer engineer neighbor, especially when his focus is algorithms for digital circuit integration.
Peering at the monstrosity of the American and British “listening” headquarters in West Berlin today, I realized
how much I have taken neighborly love for granted.
Deserted since the troops left in 1994, three listening "radomes" still stand, their technical
target practice
apparently, some folks have taken to testing out the bulletproof glass in what was once the MP's post. guts whisked away, the office furniture simply scattered on the grounds. All romantically situated behind overgrown flora and 3 sets of barbed wire fencing. Not that this hasn’t stopped visitors, err….trespassers.
Carsten and I were both to wimpy to risk it - as he’s a government employee and well, I’d like 2 more weeks of vacation. He quite enthusiastically answered all of my tech questions - which were not aberrantly ignorant since I had done some homework before departing
(http://www.ccc.de/teufelsberg/index.html). Check out the photos…
Carsten also tolerated all of my badgering social questions: what did people really think was going on here? did everyone know? and if so, what did the average West Berliner think of the cat-and-mouse game? (as, the West was also everywhere…)
And so, marveling at the soccer-ball orbs glinting in the sun, imagining gymnasium-sized rooms of consoles, decoders and back-patting colleagues…I had yet another new appreciation for the USA…despite our own government’s domestic tapping - I find there is still a greater degree of openness and trust in neighbors.
Of course, I wasn’t alive or old enough to be suspicious or suspected of during the Japanese internments or the Cold War…though I
area 51?
what really went on here? do remember the way we all looked at one another on the subway those days and even weeks after 9/11…but yet, something still tells me it was not to the degree it was here between the West and the East.
Or rather, the way it is:
Once again, a Berlin excursion came ironically on the day that BBC has run a headline this morning on a German government minister accused of listening (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7368980.stm) . So far, they’re not investigating.
What I would like to know is: just how efficient and effective was this NSA place?
For, I would like to confidently add it to the growing number of Berlin site, sounds and stories that portray America as a country of do-gooders. It really is something else to be in a foreign country where around every corner, there’s another very positive, grateful reminder of "our" American presence here.
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