Checkpoint Charlie

[dd74]

Could any Americans get into the East before the wall came down? That's what I'm interested in. What was life like then, and if anyone witnessed it?

I keep thinking of burning oil drums for warmth, or some old fat German butcher, carving meat with a cleaver instead of a modern, electric tool.

[Jim727]

Sure - it was definitely possible. Like Fint said, it was like going from color to black & white.

Not so much with oil drums - lots of coal smoke, though.

[slodave]

As a kid, my parents and I drove to Prague. A really vivid memory, is when we stopped at the border for lunch and being a hyper kid, I decided to walk up to the border. I looked up and saw the two guys in the guard tower in Czech. One had his binocs on me, the other had his machine gun trained on me - a kid. Prague was a bustling town, but again grimy. Again, there are these beautiful sites, the astronomical clock, the amazing Jewish bridge...

As soon as you left your hotel, you would be hit up by the locals for Western currency. Illegal for them to posses, but when they had it, they could go to the "Western" stores. Kinda like 7-11's.. They allowed Westerners to shop for Western goods and only accepted Western currency.

These were amazing times and amazing memories. I am forever grateful to have been able to experience them first hand.

[Jim727]

Prague - what a great place.

[dd74]

Sounds very interesting. I wonder if that particular history could repeat itself elsewhere. Hmmm. It's sort of a matter of one taking their pick of where it could repeat itself.

[Jim727]

I suppose it could, but I can't think of anyplace today with the same combination of conditions.

It was, indeed, interesting.

[Embraer]

Originally Posted by Jim727

Prague - what a great place.

My favorite city...if I would move abroad, I'd move there. Said it before, and I'll say it again....

[Rot 911]

Originally Posted by dd74

Could any Americans get into the East before the wall came down? That's what I'm interested in. What was life like then, and if anyone witnessed it?

I was in the Army in Germany in the late 70's. You had to get flag orders (so called because they had a U.S. Flag, in color, at the top of the orders) to go visit East Berlin. We would take a train through East Germany to Berlin. You could not get off the train anywhere along the way in East Berlin. Would cross over into East Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie. Was fun to trade Playboy and Penthouse magazines with the East German guards for military belt buckle or hat.

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by dd74

Could any Americans get into the East before the wall came down? That's what I'm interested in. What was life like then, and if anyone witnessed it?

I keep thinking of burning oil drums for warmth, or some old fat German butcher, carving meat with a cleaver instead of a modern, electric tool.

Yes, and I've posted about it here several times. I went to stay with a family in a village near Halle for a week the summer before the Wall came down. It took a few mos. to get the visa and my hosts also had to get a visa to allow me to stay with them. The real DDR was totally different from East Berlin, which was totally different from West Berlin. The country was never third world. It was poor and ratty. But you did not see beggars and horribly maimed bums on the street like you do in the real third world.

When I arrived in this village, my friends had to take me to the next town to register with the police. They took my passport and gave me an exit visa. In that week I got to go Dresden, Eisleben, Wittenberg, Pirna and Leipzig. I've been back to all of them several times in recent years and they are all cleaned up. In fact, on that first trip, I even saw a bunch of N. Korean diplomats in Dresden. They all had on the beige Mao suits and Kim Il Sung pin. They stared at me like I was a Martian. I was wearing Levi 501's and red Chuck Taylors. There were Russian soldiers everywhere back then. The DDR was a very good assignment for them. I always heard it was paradise compared to service in the homeland. And after reunification, they had a lot of deserters refuse to go back to Russia.

It was the greatest learning experience of my life. I got to see and do it all. I got snuck into a factory for a tour, got to wait in ridiculous lines, got asked if the US still had prohibition, got to meet a lot of WWII vets and see some amazing history. I have always believed the eastern part of Germany has the lion's share of beauty and history. And they also have the coolest dialect.

Around 1991 when I worked at Bayer near Cologne, my boss turned out to be from Halle. I recognized his dialect and it turns out he had lived in the same apartment block as some other friends of mine. He was allowed to emmigrate in the mid-80's. We became great friends. But he had no interest in ever going back to Halle. He was treated pretty badly by the Stasi for trying to leave.

[Rikao4]

Katarina Witt thought she had all..
she had a Golf cabrio & an apartment to herself..
think now...wake up in 1980..
that's what it was like..

Rika

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by slodave

As soon as you left your hotel, you would be hit up by the locals for Western currency. Illegal for them to posses, but when they had it, they could go to the "Western" stores. Kinda like 7-11's.. They allowed Westerners to shop for Western goods and only accepted Western currency.

These were amazing times and amazing memories. I am forever grateful to have been able to experience them first hand.

In East Germany, these store were call Intershops. They had them in all the major cities and at highway rest stops on the three hwys. to Berlin. I went to them all the time, as I was spoiled by western-quality goods, had the western cash and also wanted to treat my friends to shopping sprees.

When in the DDR, you had to exchange 25 DM per day for their own Marks at a one to one rate. So when I arrived for my weeklong stay, I had to do it all right there on the border. I had just under 200 M and it was impossible to spend it. There was nothing to buy. On the last day I was in Leipzig, bought a book, a pocket knife and a bottle of whiskey for the long train ride to Austria. I kept the change.

Also, in just about every restaurant, they were out of almost everything. It got to the point, where you just had to ignore the menu and ask the waiter what they did have.

[Rick Lee]

I have to scan some of my old prints. I took a lot of photos there.

Also, when I lived in Germany for 14 mos. in 91-92, I went back to visit my friends in the east every month or two. On every trip I noticed things gettng better - roads being resurfaced, banks housed in mobiles homes becoming brick and mortar banks, phone lines getting better, road signs, home renovations. It was quite a time. Now it's so different that there's really no sign of how it used to be. One thing I'll never forget is the smell. Those Trabbis smoked like old lawnmowers and the trains had this weird leather and wood smell to them.

A few years ago I went to the Spy Museum in DC (totally lame, skip it). They had a section on the Stasi and had a real Trabbi there with the windows down. I stuck my head in one window and it still had that smell. It was like the Seinfeld episode. The smell never goes away.

[masraum]

Lots of interesting experiences in this thread. Pictures would be interesting too....

My dad was in the Navy, I've lived in Japan twice, lived a few places in the states and spent a couple of summers in southern Spain. I count myself very lucky that I've been able to travel and live other places, but my experience pales compared to some of you.

[sc_rufctr]

Originally Posted by dd74

Yeah, many were killed evidently trying to cross.

Here's one of the more famous deaths:



Peter Fechter (January 14, 1944 – August 17, 1962) was a German bricklayer from East Berlin in what became East Germany in 1945, who, at the age of eighteen, became one of the first victims of the Berlin Wall's border guards while trying to cross over to what was then West Berlin.

Fechter supposedly was shot in the hip, stumbled into the barbed wire, became entangled and bled to death while both American and German/Soviet soldiers had a standoff as to who would help him.

Rest in Peace Peter Fechter

[dd74]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

I have to scan some of my old prints. I took a lot of photos there.

Yes, and post them here. That would be great.

[Rick Lee]

BTW, the inner-German border was a lot deadlier than the Berlin Wall. The DDR regime did not want tourists to see people get shot or whatever from the other side. So, after Fechter's death, they just made it about impossible to get through without getting caught. It was about 155 km long, a manageable distance. The rest of the border was way too vast to cover with manpower, so they mined it and, if you can believe it, had robotic machine guns tripped by motion sensors. They were called Selbstschussanlagen and they have some of them in the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. Youtube has some video demos of how all this stuff worked. Lots of folks got killed in the middle of nowhere with no westerners around to witness it. I forget how much distance it was, but something like 10km inside the border was considered Sperrgebiet or restricted zone and you had to have a permit to enter it. If you lived there, you had to have a special permit to even own a ladder. East Germany was the most efficient police state of all time, far more so than N. Korea. I remember when Eric Honecker said around 1989 that the Wall would remain another 100 years and, at the time, I believed it.

[Rikao4]

their Borderdogs would make pitbulls run..
east german lineage is prized in GS circles..

family members of guards were mostly inland..(hostage)..

Rika

[m21sniper]

"Mr. Gorbachev....tear down this wall."

[kevin993]

We've really enjoyed our tours through the areas around Dresden, Liepzig, and many of the smaller towns in the countryside. We've found very friendly people of all ages and people who are very friendly towards Americans. Prague was interesting to visit, but we've found the German towns to be much more warm and friendly.

Here's three photos of Dresden from our 2008 visit. The story of the Frauenkirche is amazing - it was bombed, left in rubble, rebuilt and finally re-opened in 2005.

[Rick Lee]

I have a photo of the Frauenkirche I took in 1989. It was a pile of rubble then and unrecognizeable as anything else.

For you guys who are interested in East Germany stuff, the movie Goodbye Lenin is a must see. I mean, drop what you're doing and buy or rent it today. It's that good. I have the DVD, but it's in German. The basic gist is a lady who's a true believer in the old East Germany has a heart attack after seeing the police beat up her son in a protest shortly before the Wall fell. She goes into a coma and, for the several months she's in it, the Wall comes down and the East Germany she knew and loved has disappeared. To keep her from getting stressed after she comes out it, her kids try to recreate the old East Germany in her tiny apartment to the extent of making fake newscasts and steaming labels off old pickle jars. It's one of the alltime best movies out there, more so if you speak German.

Another one is Lives of Others, which is a Stasi drama and gives you feel for what the old East Germany looked and felt like. It's pretty realistic, except that just about no one in it has the right dialect.

If you saw Spy Games, the scene with Brad Pitt in East Berlin gets pretty close to how it was too.