![]() ![]() But I couldn't get to it because it was frontier territory for my country and as forbidden as the Berlin Wall. After all, I reasoned, surely an island should be a place that can only be reached by ship? Like the island's lighthouse on a tiny rocky outcrop near the coast. Two bridges chained it to the mainland – and to my romantic, girlish mind, it didn't feel like a proper island. I spent my childhood holidays on the shores of the Baltic with my grandparents, who lived on the island of Usedom. My domain ended at the shores of the Baltic Sea, with seemingly insurmountable barriers separating me from the outside world. I realised for the first time how small my country was when compared with the rest of the world. ![]() Then I tried to find my home – the German Democratic Republic. The first time I did this was after watching a television documentary on the Galapagos Islands. I was desperate to travel when I was a girl, but the only way I could escape was through the pages of my atlas. Before the wall fell, living here meant most of the world was out of reach. ![]() O pening an atlas at a random page or spinning the globe and picking out a destination with eyes closed – who hasn't done that? I grew up in East Germany – on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. ![]()
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