"East/West ++ Memories from two Berlins" Berlin Travelogue by sabsi

Here I will try to tell you what it was like when there were still two Berlins on a Germany map. Of course it's hard to describe it if you haven't been there then but I will try. I am glad that I had the opportunity to experience what it was like.

I will also tell you funny stories that happened to us when Berlin was still divided....

Let's start the adventure - here is your transit visa!

Transit Visa

Without this visa you were not allowed to get to West Berlin by car or by train.

On the autobahn from West Germany to West Berlin you were only allowed to stop at special car parks, East German cars were only allowed to stop at other special car parks. Really strange!

On these car parks for "Wessies" there always used to be an "Intershop" - a place where West Germans could buy duty free Western stuff like cigarettes and alcohole. You had to show your passport to buy something here. Sometimes there were fashion shops here as well... if you wanted to you could buy an original East German "Wisent" Jeans. But they were very ugly so I guess only blind people bought one ;-)

My father once missed the last exit to Berlin on the Autobahn and he had to drive backwards in a road works section because otherwise we'd have ended up in Poland or in prison. HAHA I thought he was crazy, thank god the police was somewhere else at that time - ripping off West German drivers because they drove faster than 100 kmh as usual :)

The checkpoint GDR/FRG

The most impressive moment when travelling to Berlin or to the GDR was to cross the border to the GDR of course. Here you can see the checkpoint between Helmstedt and Marienborn which was turned into a memorial after the wall had come down. It has lost the scary feeling but it still sends you shivers down your spine so I can recommend visiting this place!!!

Here you stood in traffic jams for hours sometimes, you were treated even more unfriendly than when paying a chewing gum with your credit card in a supermarket the day before christmas and if you were unlucky your car was searched and broken into pieces to do so.

We always arrived early in the morning to avoid the long queues, after leaving West Germany I suddenly felt this strange feeling inside me, like you couldn't breathe anymore. You drove (You were allowed a speed of something like 10 k an hour here) through the border itself before coming to the checkpoint. The GDR had put some Russian tanks here to make it even more spooky. At the checkpoint itself you were just hoping that the officers were in a good mood today so that it would be quick, you gave away your passports (YES, Germans needed a passport AND visa to visit their families on the other side, an ID wasn't enough!), they checked them, asked you some questions and after you had survived you had to survive the toilet smell on East German ground. I'll never forget that smell. YUCK! The toilets are still there now and I went there when I was there last time - the smell is gone!

From here your driving turned more into riding because the raods were terrible. They were still in the same state they were when the Nazis had built them. Big holes and gaps. Argh! When you looked at the villages left and right of the road you realised that you were in the East - colours were missing. Everything was grey and it smelled of coal from their heating!!!

At the checkpoint

On the way back I always felt a big releaf as soon as we were on the western side of the border again. I felt so happy that I was lucky to live on the "right" side of the border - without "Big Brother Watching you" and with the freedom of going where you want to go.

When approaching the border at night it was unbelieveable how bright it was here. A workmate of mine from the East of Germany told me what he felt when he crossed this border first after 1989. He suddenly knew why it was hard to get lightbulbs or fences in the GDR - they were all used at the borderline ;)

It's the end of the world (as we know it)

We took a spraycan once in a while, went to the wall and wrote something onto it. Once a friend threw the spraycan over the wall and the alarm went off. Because we knew it was illegal to paint the wall and the wall stood on East German ground we ran like never before to the closest U-Bahn Stop.

2nd again -- written on the wall for ever?!

Every year after the german rowing school championships we let Berlin know how successful we were...

Looking over the wall

These watchtowers stood on the West side next to the wall so that you could look over the wall to see the terrible border and the houses in the east. You could see people in the east sometimes but as they weren't allowed to live close to the wall you couldn't get near to them. Must have been terrible for the people though, to walk along the streets with the "wessies" staring at them from behind the wall!!

World Time Clock, Alexanderplatz

This is the clock at Alexanderplatz in East Berlin. It shows the time for many places all around the world (where people living here were never allowed to go). Of course they chose to show the communist countries' capitals first...

Because you could get in trouble taking pictures of the wrong things I don't have too many pictures from the east unfortunately :-(

Trabant Car

Sonja and "her" lovely Trabant car, called "Trabbi". People had to drive these cars - made out of plastics and cardboard ;) - they couldn't get any others. Well they could get Wartburgs or Skodas, too - but they were all terrible. The good thing about them was that they were easy to repair so that you could fix them yourself.

When you ordered a car it took years to get it. So legend had it that when a baby was born you had to order a car for him so that he had a car at his 18th birthday!!

I drove a Trabbi once - a lifetime experience. It took me half an hour to find the reverse gear!!

Oh and I always liked the colour so I bought my car in a similar colour ;-)

East Berlin Day Ticket

This is what a day pass for the East Berlin subway looked like. I just found it but I can't remember having used it much in the East, anyway! We walked almost everywhere...

Sitting in the West Berlin Subway when Berlin was still divided into East and West was a spooky adventure. The trains were allowed to pass through the East German stations, but of course they didn't stop and the stations were closed off and dark.

It was a really strange feeling to drive through them and to know that noone living in East Germany could get here.

I guess a lot of building work was necessary to keep the roof up even though they were closed off for 40 years! So sometimes there was somebody working there - inbetween two policeman!!

At the station "Friedrichstrasse" you could even change trains if you wanted to get from A (West Berlin) to B (West Berlin) quickly. Well we were 15, and we were experiencing something special, something incredible there so we loved to go there just to experience the thrill of changing trains and waiting next to policemen with their Kalaschnikow Machine Guns!

Now all the stations are open again but the memory of this still sends me shivers down my spine....

20 Marks ... enough to keep you occupied for a day

The problem with going to East Berlin for an afternoon was that you had to change 25 DM (west) into 25 M (east) per day that you were staying in the GDR. Prices there, however, were socialist prices (=very very cheap) and as you all know you couldn't just walk into a shop and buy what you wanted, you had to buy what they had that day. So it was very difficult to spend all the money (and as far as I know you weren't allowed to take it back to the west (but I might be wrong, I can't really remember).

A normal afternoon in East Berlin was normally spent with the following:

To go somewhere for a fancy 3 course meal (normally in the "Palast der Republik" (the palace of the Republic, one of the ugliest buildings I have ever seen)
10 Marks

Then some sightseeing (maybe to go up the TV tower)
50 Pfennigs

To go shopping to get rid of the rest buying brushes, records, paper, rulers etc.
14,50 Marks

The wall at Brandenburg Gate

This was the place where it most obvious that Berlin was a divided city. The Brandenburg Gate stood on Nomansland inbetween the East wall and the west wall. Whenever I went there (which wasn't too often, back then this was at the edge of the city and there wasn't much going on!) I thought what it would be like to walk through Brandenburg Gate as I knew if from one of my favourite films - Billy Wilder's "Eins Zwei Drei". I thought I'd never be able to walk there - but it was only a few years later and I did. Amazing!

It was here, where people stood on the wall first and celebrated on 9th of November 1989.

The wall at Reichstag

On this picture which I took behind the Reichstag - which back then was just a historical building whereas now it's our parliament - you can see the houses in the east which don't have any windows on the wall facing west.

Legends say there were tunnels under the wall here. We visited the Reichstag once and our guide told us but I forgot the whole story :(

The wall at Potsdamer Platz

Potsdamer Platz - which is now a place full of skyscrapers and shops - used to be a deserted place with the wall and nothing else. Every tourist bus stopped here to be able to look over the wall.

The wall at Potsdamer Platz

You could always find some great art work on the wall here and you could walk along it for a while without ending up in a normal street!

It was interesting to read what the people wrote, sprayed and painted onto the wall in all those years. There were political as well as personal statements and there were big grafittis and real paintings. Famous ones that ended up on postcards, Old ones, new ones.
Imagining that on the other side this was "just" a grey concrete wall was really strange!

The wall at Potsdamer Platz

Please ignore our terrible 80s clothes on all these pictures ;-)