On my way to the train station, I decided to stop for a beer. I was escorted to a table already occupied by two uniformed East German soldiers and a civilian. They seemed pleased to meet me, and we downed a few steins. Feeling hungry and cheerful, I asked them in my terrible German accent if there was anything on the menu they might recommend, something local and authentic. All three immediately agreed — I should try the Hackepeter, a dish made of raw beef and chopped onions.

Image Credit... Photograph by Lars Klove for The New York Times. Food stylist: Jill Santopietro.

Maybe I was a little drunk, but I said yes. It helped that I actually liked raw meat as a kid — I often stole pinches of ground beef when my mother wasn’t looking — and had nothing against onions. The waiter brought my meal, and I stared down at it in dismay — there was the meat, there was the chopped onion and there, floating on top, was a raw egg, its yolk a viscous yellow sun.

The civilian, a guy named Klaus, helpfully mashed the concoction together with his fork, showing me how it was done. Once the egg had disappeared, a little of my courage returned. I poked my own fork into the sloppy mixture and took a tentative bite.

It was, I’m happy to report, quite tasty, a nice combination of blandness (the meat) and sharpness (the onion), with no eggy overtones whatsoever. I ate the whole thing. My new friends toasted my courage, and we proceeded to get quite drunk. When the soldiers left, I had a few more beers with Klaus, who grew somber and confessed to me that he was a dissident who’d been jailed several times for his political views. He invited me to return in a couple of days so that he could show me the real East Berlin, the places the government didn’t want people to know about.

This was, of course, exactly what I was hoping for, a chance to experience something real and dangerous. On my second visit, Klaus took me to the wall and instructed me to take some pictures from the Western side that he could use to plan his escape. It’s obvious to me now that he was working for the Stasi — no actual dissident would have been that stupid — but at the time I just felt frightened and confused. I promised him that I would mail him the pictures, but I knew I never would.

A few days later I had dinner on an American military base — my host was a woman from my hometown, the wife of a career officer. Over a meal of hamburgers and hot dogs, I told them of my troubling adventure with Klaus. The officer listened with increasing alarm and then told me I needed to go to the United States consulate the next day. At the consulate, I was informed that I might be vulnerable to arrest by the East German authorities for helping someone to escape. I protested that I hadn’t actually helped Klaus, that I only made an insincere promise to do so, but this didn’t seem to reassure anyone. It was strongly recommended that I leave the country in a sealed military train that couldn’t be searched by the East Germans. Who was I to argue? I slipped out like a spook, missing out on a once-in-a-lifetime chance to experience the amenities of the East German penal system.