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Helen - Going Back
I did that thing you're not supposed to do recently - I went back.
I went back after more than 30 years to a place with waist-high snow and 36 different kinds of sausages where everyone's father was in the army and we did comprehension exercises on Piccadilly Circus in the middle of people for which English was a foreign language.
I went back to a city you entered down a corridor with a Union Jack in the glove compartment to secure your passage and where passport control officials used mirrors to check under vehicles for stowaways.
At least that's how I remembered it.
But the house had shrunk and the trees had grown. There was no snow and multi-national fast food outlets out-numbered the street corner sausage sellers 4 t 1. The school was full of local children (although they were learning to play cricket.) It was easy to travel around and you could get off at any underground station without being greeted by an armed guard.
I made my way to the one place I really wanted to go. The barbed wire watch-towers and graffiti'd wall and no-man's land were gone. Only a double line of cobbles across a busy road junction showed what had been before.
And finally, I was glad that the Berlin of my childhood was lost forever.
As I stood not quite believing I could take one step further a dirty great double decker bus drove through the Brandenburg gate.