I was a war child.
I grew up during the war and did my high school diploma in North Vietnam.
The war was all over the country,
but the main theatre was in the South.
We were were in the communist youth organization, of course.
Like everything, education and training in a communist country
was thoroughly planned and organized. One or two percent
of the best students were sent to study abroad.
Anyone working in the social sciences, for example,
has to be ideologically reliable, of course.
I don’t think it was like that for the natural sciences.
I was so young and can barely remember how I felt at the time.
My parents celebrated. It was a lucky break for us.
Everyone dreams of going abroad.
We were only told who was going to which country shortly before our departure.
I didn’t know anything about the GDR.
I only knew it from a children’s song that was well-known for a time.
In the song, a child from South Vietnam sings of the amazing fruits Vietnam has,
like coconut, pineapple and mango, which we in the North didn’t even have,
and then asks his uncle: when will it be time to send these amazing fruits
to our friends in East Germany?