In Europe

their cage for the first time in years. But after we had danced in the field for a day, something else suddenly occurred to us: what happens if a fox shows up?’
    They were exciting times, and our unexpected arrival was yet another sign that major changes were on their way. We had brought wine with us, and coffee and tea, and fresh fruit and Dutch chocolate, and Eckart talked about days gone by and his countless skirmishes with the Apparatus. Before the
Wende
, he had been required to report every rehearsal of the church choir. The second-hand plastic paint buckets from Christoph Unmack, extremely popular among the locals for use in their kitchen gardens, first had to be dipped in grey paint to cover up the gaudy Western labels. When Eckart heard about that, he stormed into the office of his technical manager – a well known Stasi agent – and shouted: ‘You people are no longer a party of workers, you're a party of bucket-dippers!’
    He never heard anything more about it, but Gudrun – who was one of the best pupils at her school – ran into difficulties when she wanted to go to university. Eckart: ‘As long as you don't forget that: it wasn't Erich Honecker who did that, it was the work of thousands of little people together, all making each other's lives miserable.’
    The revolution in Niesky in spring 1990 was subtly visible in the mast-head of the
Sächsische Zeitung
. For as long as anyone could remember, the local paper had been falling on the Winkler's mat under the title
Organ der Berzirksleitung Dresden der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschland
, but from early December 1989 it was simply a
Sozialistische Tageszeitung
, and from January 1990 the paper called itself the
Tageszeitung für Politik, Wirtschaft und Kultur
. In that same month appeared the first advertisements for trips to Paris: ‘No need to eat at expensive restaurants. Simple meals will be served on the bus, and can even be paid for with DDR marks.’
    Niesky lived breathlessly, as though a fairy godmother had promised all the town's inhabitants three wishes: free travel, a solid Opel, and allparty nabobs thrown overboard. In the final weeks before the first free elections, however, a certain bitterness crept into the flat on Plittstrasse. Eckart had a good memory, and it was now working to his disadvantage. His managers, who had begun calling themselves ‘entrepreneurs’, were the same men who had recently insisted that all colourful plastic buckets be painted grey. For years many of the neophyte CDU candidates had toed Honecker's party line, enthusiastically and without question. They were
Wendehälse
, weathervanes. Eckart considered this the ‘selling out’ of everything for which they had all worked so hard. Inge: ‘During the demonstrations in November there was a pride in our own country unlike anything we had felt for years. We dreamed of something between capitalism and socialism, the best of both worlds. But when the West German politicians began interfering in our elections, it was all over. They're much better talkers, those
Wessis
.’
    On election Sunday, 18 March, 1990, the whole family stayed glued to the radio. That morning in church they had been able to laugh about it, but the mood soured as the results trickled in. The ‘Western’ Christian Democratic Allianz für Deutschland received almost half the votes, the coalition of ninety opposition groups surrounding the New Forum barely three per cent. What it boiled down to was carte blanche for a merger with the West.
    Friends from all over began calling. ‘What's it like over there?’ ‘Is this what we risked our necks for all those years?’ ‘We did all the dirty work for these new party bosses, we took the risks. They're just swimming along with the new tide.’ ‘Now they're all snapping to attention in front of Kohl.’ ‘They did it for a car, for the money, to fill their stomachs!’
    Gudrun and Inge sat in their living room, weeping.
    When my colleague and I returned to Niesky two years later, in 1992, the fairy godmother had actually come by. The houses and side streets still looked a little dilapidated, but the main roads had been repaved, the air was twice as clean – new cars and stoves work wonders – and the shops were overflowing with kiwis and video recorders. All the Karl-Marx-Strassen and Friedrich-Engels-Strassen had been transformed into Goethe-and Schiller-Strassen. At the edge of town, a consortium of Western companies had