Checkpoint Charlie
 

Let us not forget to commemorate Checkpoint Charlie - removed 20 years ago today.

Best museum in Germany. And as of the last time I was there, it was the most popular one in Berlin and received no gov't. funding. I crossed Checkpoint Charlie a few times when it was still active. Very eery, but a lot more civilized than crossing the inner German border in other areas.

I crossed checkpoint charlie, and it actually was a much more civilized experience than the one you are getting coming into the US at JFK nowadays.

I saw a great series of photos that showed almost hour-by-hour how the Berlin Wall was assembled. Freakiest damn thing when you see how such a symbol between Us and Them was built with shovels, concrete, cement mixers, and human labor, all in a couple days. People were strolling back and forth as the wall was being built. Crazy.

I crossed Checkpoint Charlie as well. I had posted a thread last November of me bashing on the Wall.

My dear friends who live near Halle (former E. Germany) planned to escape to W. Berlin the weekend the Wall went up. It was a Sunday morning and once they'd heard on the radio what happened, they stayed home. Most of the escapes happened in the first years of the Wall, before it got real fortified and technical. The later ones were super daring and very risky. Several border guards were later prosecuted for shooting defectors once the country was unified. Kinda crazy that another country can prosecute you for stuff you did under orders in your own country when it was a sovereign country. W. Germany always had the attitude that it was the only legitimate Germany.

The last person to be shot trying to get over the Wall was killed February 1989....

I was first there in June 1988 and in Halle in July 1989. At that time there was absolutely no sign of the DDR collapsing. The Monday night prostests in Leipzig were just beginning, but were not reported. While I was there they implemented the requirement for DDR citizens to get a visa to visit Hungary, which had just removed their fence with Austria in May. I took a train to Austria from Leipzig and we ended up driving to Hungary via Vienna. We could see abandoned Trabants on the side of the road and people wandering through the fields into Austria. Such history.

Tear down the Wall!

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Amazing times - I was living in Berlin then and even though I knew history was in the making it took a while for the magnitude to sink in. Was at the Brandenburg Gate for both the first New Year (Silvester) and October Wiedervereinigung. Even today it seems surreal.

Right after the wall fell I went to Bauhaus to get a good chisel. Behind the Reichstag I was working doing my bit to dismantle the thing and locals would come up and ask for pieces. I finally got to where I would give them the hammer and chisel along with "selbst bedienung" (self-service). They would grin, take a few whacks of revenge and then get their pictures taken with the hammer and wall.

Both partitions considered themselves to be the "only" Germany. I remember following a road sign to Berlin while in Potsdam - seemed to be a strange routing but that happens. The routing was to East Berlin, southerly around the non-existent West Berlin.

So many memories...

I wonder if anyone here had been to E. Germany before the wall fell. I'd be fascinated to see the differences in technology and advancement between East and West Berlin.

I've heard E. Berlin was anything from idyllic to an all-out slum.

Oh -

One of the pieces of the wall I still have has a very odd looking aggregate in the concrete. It's a very special piece for me, and people are really taken aback when I let them hold it and explain that what they are seeing is the brick and stone of the homes and businesses that were bulldozed and ground up to make the concrete for the wall. Humans can be so stupid and so cruel to each other - all for dogma.

I doubt we will ever learn.

Even when I was there at the end, crossing into East Germany was still surreal. You go from this colorful area to a place that is sooty and gray. The Trabants were painted, but the colors resembled the colors from the 50's and flat. The one thing that stood out, were some of the store fronts. They had access to incredible crystal and china from Czech. Beautiful pieces in contrast with the surroundings.

Yeah, many were killed evidently trying to cross.

Here's one of the more famous deaths:

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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.

Yes, East Germany, USSR, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia.... The Soviets punished the Germans by making them live in the rubble of the war.

Right behind the Reichstag is a very interesting building. My wife and I were looking at it (looked like the last shot was fired just an hour before) when an East German gent and his son asked us if we knew the history of the building. No.... Turns out it is where Dr. Koch discovered the cause of tuberculosis.

The cities were a mess.

Footnote: We became good friends with the family I mentioned above. Went sailing with them on Scharmuetzelsee at a time when Americans were complete unknowns. Delightful people. We visit them on every trip to Berlin and they have stayed with us to see the Decadent West.

Homes and businesses bulldozed for the concrete and in the wake, beautiful crystal. Unbelievable...

So has it cleaned up a bit in the East or is it still Third World?

Also, I heard the West Germans were sorely pissed after the wall fell because the East Germans were coming in and taking all the employment -- for much less pay.

I did. It was very different than the west. It was like going from a color movie (West Berlin) into a black and white one.
They had not really accomplished the shrinking of electronics and their portable radios were big as lunch boxes. There were shortages of most things...but a dollar would buy a lot.

Things are a lot different. I have East German relatives. A cousin is actually here in the states now, working for HP. In 2007, when I was last in Germany, I was finally able to meet more of my East German family. They all drive BMW's and Merc's. :)

Yes, the W. Germans were not happy when the first waves from the East came over. But at the same time, it was a struggle, because families were finally reunited. Today, it is business as usual.

Yes, everything is changing. The joke is that the official bird of Berlin is the Crane (as in construction crane).

The Ossi/Wessi (Ossi = East German; Wessi = West German) divide is very complex and, in some ways, greater than when the physical wall was there. The East Germans to some degree look at their years behind the wall as imprisonment and they deserve to be made whole. The West Germans to some degree have the attitude that they worked for everything they have so the Ossis can do the same.

One problem is very similar to our experience after WWII; rebuilding the devastated West German economy gave them much more state-of-the-art infrastructure than what we had. Same thing is happening to the East - and is being done with West German money. Also, the East Mark was exchanged 1:1 for the West Mark. As I recall, the fair market rate was really 16:1. I remember having tea with an East German who held his new money and very emotionally expressed disbelief that he was holding something that actually had value. That exchange resulted in inflation which, for the Germans, is very unwelcome given the memories of the 1930s.

The other, rather tragic, problem that divides East/West is that the East was so far behind in their education and business practices that the West German gov't made the decision that people over (I think it was 50) didn't have enough working life left in them to be worth the investment in retraining. This has built a whole generation of throw-aways. Imagine the problems.

Things are decidedly better, and aside from the massive amounts of graffiti that Berlin is now experiencing, the divide is difficult for an outsider to discern. It is, however, there. It will take time for the divide to disappear.

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.

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.

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.

Prague - what a great place.

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.

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

It was, indeed, interesting.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Rest in Peace Peter Fechter

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

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.

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

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

Rika

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.


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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.