“It’s hard to believe that we are really out of the Iron Curtain countries. I feel as though I’ve never tasted real freedom before: I find myself talking in patriotic clichés, crowing with pleasure over Dutch coffee, smiling faces, good old bourgeois luxury, and freedom!  The truth is that however exciting Russia may have been – and it was! – there is a general oppressive feeling there, of being watched and followed and listened to, of drabness and monotony of thought. The great lack is variety: and that’s what we’ve got that makes life fascinating.”

Leonard Bernstein to Helen Coates, September 13, 1959

Leonard Bernstein taking a crack at the Berlin Wall, 1989