Group Analytic Contexts, Issue 77, September 2017

19 Group-Analytic Society International - Contexts
160 Km in 3 Days: Hiking and Biking the
Berliner Mauer
By the participants, edited by Teresa von Sommaruga Howard
After our three days together, I had the idea of writing about the
experience and asking everyone else to add their reflections and
photographs also. What has emerged is very richly coloured
‘patchwork quilt’. It is long but contains many surprising insights. I
am sure my fellow Bikers and Hikers agree with me that we hope it
gives you, the reader, a flavour of Berlin from the Mauer.
We began this long journey, Bikers and Hikers on 12 August,
just before the anniversary of an auspicious weekend. 56 years ago,
Berliners had woken up on the Sunday morning of 13 August 1961 to
discover a barbed wire barricade had appeared overnight cutting off
East from West.
On the evening
before, the Bikers
met with the Hikers
for our first median
group. These were
planned for the end of
each day and a social
dreaming matrix each
morning. Next day
and after social
dreaming the Bikers
set off from northeast
Berlin in the
former eastern sector. A smaller group of Hikers also set off to hike
sections of the wall. We had agreed to meet each evening in a median
group. As she was as stay in the same hotels as the Bikers, one Hiker,
Sarah from Israel, also met the Bikers for social dreaming each
morning.