‘But that’s not my intention. I play this game for the fun and without bad intentions.’
‘Mer, you don’t have to defend yourself. Be grateful for everything you have.’
I was grateful for what I had and also a little bit for what I didn’t have. The latter made life a bit more exciting. The nicest thing about all new relationships is the uncertainty what would happen next.
Shooting with Kalashnikovs
The flickering advertising sign brought me back to reality. Las Vegas, the best place for day dreams. A tribute to luxury, excess, excitement and romance. The only place in the world where project developers would buy hotels worth more than $ 100 million and then blow them up to create something more luxurious on the same site. Everything I saw seemed so surreal. From the waterfall in front of the casino that turned into a volcano, to the pirate ship that sank into an artificial pond along the main street. It seems more surreal than believing in the nice lies of communism.
Every day, in rain and wind, we would stand on the school yard jumping and waving. If you did not bend your knees far enough you had to report to the Head. No one was allowed to sabotage the divine morning gymnastic session. To finish off we sang communist songs, a choir of hundreds of young people, most of whom could not sing. The class that sang the loudest was always allowed by the Head to enter the school first.
The morning gymnastics were just as obligatory as school itself. If you arrived late, you got a mark for absence. After a few times this would result in a reprimand and if you played truant more often you were expelled from school. We even had a page for good behaviour in our report which was of great importance for our future career. Elite schools did not want any pupils whose grade had been demoted from ‘exemplary’ to ‘good’.
If you did something stupid, you were dragged on to the raised podium during the morning gymnastic session in front of the whole school. A comrade would then inform everyone what you had done. Even the best-behaved girls sometimes had the dubious honour of climbing this podium. For example, Petja had entered the school through a side entrance instead of the designated main entrance. This shorter route earned her a place on the podium of shame. She was extremely upset, because she was one of the most proper girls at school.
I hated morning gymnastics, but I liked the real gym lessons. Finally, I could take off that silly uniform. My body was nicely toned because until recently I had played tennis for three hours a day. Strong, agile and quick was an ideal basis for many sports. I was often asked to represent the school in a variety of competitions: from high jump to volleyball to short track and cross country.
Some boys could not stand being beaten by a girl. That made my victory all the sweeter. I had a whole collection of medals and trophies, which I usually saved for six months. After that they ended up in the bin, because I would win new ones anyway. I was a born winner. I believed that it was a good thing to have setbacks every now and then so that I would value my victories all the more, but how did I achieve this? Everything was in my favour, at school, in sports and also in love. That terrified me. Surely it was not possible to be happy for your entire life? It has to go wrong sometime.
‘Hart breakers pay the price later, ‘ my mother warned me at a young age. But I could not stop myself breaking the hearts of the young men who fell in love with me. My life was based on collecting exciting experiences, for those moments in which my heart would beat faster. Even when I was a child, I was not happy with just hearing if something was good or bad from my parents. I wanted to experience it myself, even if it was something as simple as tasting soap. My parents claimed it did not taste nice, but it smelled so good that I could hardly believe that it would not taste good either. Only when I spontaneously began to blow bubbles did I realize they were right. I rinsed my mouth out with water for half an hour. Yet I did not regret it. At least now I knew one hundred percent how soap tasted.
Worse than the mandatory morning gymnastics at school was the military training. All school children would practice using Kalashnikovs during special training camps, which we would use to protect the fatherland. Every now and then the school alarms would sound as a sign that an enemy attack was taking place and we all had to flee with as little panic as possible. We did not live in fear, but we did reckon that there would be war. America and Russia held each other hostage for years by continuing to stockpile nuclear weapons. We were certain that capitalism and communism were incompatible, but no one knew for sure if the enemy would impose their ideology with force. We practiced with gas masks, learned how to tend to the injured, marched and sang patriotic songs. Sometimes we would enter fully equipped bunkers, where you could find everything you needed to survive a while under the ground.
Russia was always a step ahead: they did not only build nuclear shelters, but whole cities which they then proceeded to destroy with their own nuclear bombs. This way the experts could decide on the thickness of the walls of important buildings and the best construction method for bridges and metro’s if a nuclear war broke out. The communist block had detailed plans how to destroy all large cities in Western Germany with a nuclear attack and reduce them to ash. After that, the tank division would enter the contaminated area so that they could occupy Belgium and the Netherlands. These kinds of plans were ‘top secret’, but the threat was tangible and we were well-prepared for it.
Sometimes highly ranked party leaders would visit us and then we had to ensure that the entire camp looked brand new. We swept the tiles on the sports yard and carefully removed every blade of grass. We were then ordered to move all the smelly bins. The question was where to? We moved them about six times over the entire yard, but the leadership did not deem any spot to be good enough. On the seventh attempt, we were allowed to leave them where they were. The place they had been standing before we started moving them.
After this failed mission, we made significant progress on the building by brushing new white paint over several weathered layers. We needed quite a few pots, but the results were spectacular at the end of the day. Of course, we knew that this was not the right way to go about it, but we were sure that the new layer of paint would stay intact long enough to pass inspection. I had my doubts about the durability of what we laughingly called the highlight of our hard labour: we were given green paint to cover up the bald spots on the field.
Despite the uselessness of these activities we never doubted the usefulness of the military camps. Karl Marx had said ‘promise a capitalist three percent profit and no crime will stop him.’ Perhaps not all Westerners were criminals, but their governments were. Amerika had preyed on our communist paradise for years. The CIA experimented with hypnosis, drugs and torture so they could brainwash prisoners into making false confessions. But they would not get us! We believed in our patriotic upbringing with heart and soul.
Once all the lights went out in the camp and the television in the communal space leaned forward threateningly. 'Run, the Americans are attacking us,’ a shocked student shouted out. ‘Stand still! The party will watch over us. Stand still!’ the comrade shouted at everyone. We stood motionless and did not know what to do. The party did seem to be protecting us, because there were no more tremors. The earthquake that we had mistook for an imperialist attack had last for only a short while.
I hated the shooting lessons. Not that I was a pacifist, but I hated it when my classmates would hit the bulls eye and I didn’t. Perhaps I preferred a pistol to the awkward rifle, although I did not know this for sure because I had never held a real pistol. By chance I was given the opportunity. Not during our military training, but during a holiday at our villa in a mountain village, where the majority of the suburban elite had a second home.