In 1990 it had been moths since the last brick of the Berlin wall had been removed but the champagne corks still burst in the air. A Unified Germany welcomed an American engineering firm to help design and build the first GSM cell phone network in Europe. GSM, or Global System for Mobile Communications, promised to revolutionize the way people communicated with each other.

As an American engineer hoisted his glass of champagne at the opening of the Mannesmann Mobilfunk office in Tiergarten, he couldn’t help but sense in the German team, for lack of a better word…stagnancy.

The following day the German technical manager, Her Schmidt, formally introduced the American engineer to the design group, made up of engineers from both West and East Berlin-a tribute to unification. At the end of the work day a West German engineer eyed the American apologetically and warned him to lock his drawers before leaving. He said one of the East German engineers had worked for the Stasi, the infamous security service, and would go through the drawers at night. The next day the American listened to an East German quietly complain that the West Germans worked more hours than the contract called for that he wore in his shirt pocket.

When the work began, though, the East and West Germans rolled up their sleeves and worked together. After all, Berlin represented the pride of a unified Germany-soon to be her new capital. Still, the American couldn’t get away from his feeling that they were complacent.

The American befriended a West Berliner, a vegetarian architect named Herr Muller. He resembled a balding Elton John and wore black plastic glasses with coke-bottle lenses. Herr Muller drove like a terror down Bismarck Strasse, where Hitler’s tanks had once rumbled along to the cheers of thousands.

The system design required the team to survey many of Berlin’s tall buildings for potential antenna installations. Herr Muller, wearing a two-beers-for-lunch grin, would pull out a Mannesmann Mobilfunk flyer and greet the Hausmeister, or building superintendent. He never failed to gain entrance to the buildings after appealing to the Hausmeister’s sense of nationalistic duty. Their Berlin excursions always included other design engineers from both east and west and the drives tended to be quiet except for the American engineer’s many questions. The Germans would often discuss a question before one of them from the west (the East Berliners spoke very little English) would attempt to answer it in English.

At the end of the first week Herr Muller invited the American engineer to his party. Deutsche conversation dominated the small flat, filled with people the American had never met. Curiously, none of the East Berliner engineers at work were present. Herr Muller pulled icy Konigs Pils beers out of a ceramic tub with bronze pig’s feet in his small living room. The tub resembled some of the urban Berliner art Herr Muller had pointed out to him.

A young purple-haired Fraulein standing next to the American stared at a piece of “The Wall” hanging from the ceiling. With melancholy eyes she said, “When the wall was up we listened to American rock and it kept us going.” » Read more: Music From Beyond the Berlin Wall