CHECKPOINT CHARLIE twice a day (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798223933328)

A coming-of-age novel played out during the raging Cold War in the 1980s in Berlin based on a true story. When 14-year-old Miriam van Mellen, aka Mix, moves from Bonn in West Germany to the divided city of Berlin in 1984, her life is thrown into turmoil. From now on she has to go to school in West Berlin, while living behind the Berlin Wall in the East, because her father, a West German diplomat, is obliged to reside in the GDR. For Mix, the excitement on arrival in the colorful splendor of West Berlin is quickly changed into disappointment as soon as she enters the gloomy and grey eastern part of the city.
It is the 1980s. East and West Berlin are separated by a wall and fiercely guarded border. To get to school, Mix has to walk across Checkpoint Charlie twice a day. In other words, she becomes intimately familiar with the most famous border crossing between the two German states. Through her favorite border officer 'Whitehair, ' who soon becomes a confidant, Mix gains insights into the other side of the iron curtain, a world normally closed to a West German teenager. She becomes a border crosser, a lonely wanderer between two very different worlds.
At school in Berlin-Kreuzberg, Mix befriends Katja, the rebel of the class. Afraid of being excluded, Mix tells no-one but Katja about her unusual situation - coming to school each day across Checkpoint Charlie. Katja accepts this without further questions and soon accompanies Mix on exciting exploratory trips into the unknown East. During summer vacation on the Baltic Sea, Mix and Katja meet two East German boys, Eric and Robert. The four youngsters become friends, their first experience with peers from the other German state, and a summer romance develops. This ends abruptly, but revives again under different circumstances. Through Eric, Mix meets a 19-year-old musician in East Berlin, who has been thinking about fleeing the GDR. Soon Mix is not only head over heels in love, but also becomes involved in the story of an unusual plan.