Member-only story
An undivided country?
Part 2 of a very personal story
In the first part of this series, I have written about my childhood. When I had to decide what to study in college, I chose the path that seemed the safest for me at that time: engineering.
But before I could enroll at the university, I had to wait for a year. Today this might seem odd because many young people want to travel the world after graduating or doing other stuff. Then the reason was much more straightforward: every young man was drafted into the East German Army, the “Nationale Volksarmee” (National Peoples Army). We were at the height of the cold war then.
But I had some medical conditions that disqualified me — at least temporarily. To prevent me from getting an advantage over my fellow classmates, I had to take a gap year.
So I went to work in a shipyard. They put me at the fitting-out pier. I had to put stuff on board with the help of a crane. It was quite interesting to watch a ship getting completed. And I earned good money, even as an unskilled worker.
When this year was over, I went to college and started studying engineering. Soon I realized that I had made a mistake. The stuff was boring and not very demanding. I was longing for something that would be more intellectually challenging.
