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Post by Deleted on Aug 20, 2010 19:45:05 GMT
Actually, I think that what made me go to Berlin the first time was because I felt that it was all "coming to an end." This was perhaps in 1986 or 1987. I felt that I absolutely had to see it before everything changed, since I had grown up with the Cold War and the Iron Curtain and all of that other crap. Frankly, I was scared shitless at the idea of visiting East Berlin all alone, and going through Checkpoint Charlie absolutely did not relax me one bit. It was an absolute and total stereotype of every spy movie that I had ever seen. I had to cross the no man's land on the designated path, and there was not another soul. People watched me from the observation towers in the West and of course from the armed guard posts of the East. I really felt like a secret agent and it was surprisingly a very unpleasant feeling when I thought maybe it would be "cool." Just for information, any citizen of the four "occupying powers" reputedly had free access to all of the zones of Berlin -- Russian, British, French and American -- after a few "formalities." But I did not know that I would have to enter a reinforced room made out of steel and slide my documents through a slot to a man behind ultra thick glass -- and that was before the searches, the x-ray machines, the scanners and all of the other stuff. It seemed as though all of the stereotypes of my youth were absolutely true, but I entered a completely different world once I finally got to the other side. It was at least 20 years in the past, and it was.... nice. West Berlin was quite gritty and not very nice, but East Berlin was clean and civilized. I debated posting the following the photos on the "random portraits" thread of the Image Bank, but they are actually not random at all. I think they are an important view of some of the people of the two Berlins back then. I'll get back to this thread with more photos of Berlin later on (scanning and uploading slides is like going through Checkpoint Charlie), but here are just some random portraits for a start, and I will let you decide for yourselves if they were taken in West or East Berlin.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 20, 2010 22:25:47 GMT
This East Berlin bowling alley astonished me, because it used a system that I had never seen before. The bowling pins were attached to wires, so between frames, the machines pulled the fallen pins up out of the way. It seemed to me that this system had two drawbacks -- 1) the possibility that the wires could get tangled and 2) the possibility of the system knocking down pins that were still standing while being pulled out of the way. Yet I did not see either of those things happening as I watched the East German bowlers.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 21, 2010 21:10:59 GMT
How did I miss seeing this?! Kerouac, if you had not said differently, I would have thought these photos were stills from a movie I would really like to see.
Most interesting to look at them & not know if they're from east or west of the Wall. Off the top of my head, I would guess the scruffy young people are in West Berlin, because they are dressed in the fashion of the time and because the stereotype in my mind says that all the young people in East Berlin were engaging in wholesome activities, such as bowling.
For the same reasons of style -- hair do & skirt -- I'd say the woman & her companions in the first picture of the red chair restaurant are in West Berlin. Again with a stereotype -- it would seem wrong somehow for good communists to have a waiter dressed in a way designed to cater to the bourgeois aspirations of the clientele.
Please tell me that the depth of my ignorance is somehow charming!
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Post by lola on Aug 24, 2010 13:11:14 GMT
I love these, K. The bowling pin thing demonstrates neatness and order.
Wasn't the Wall a bizarre concept?
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Post by hwinpp on Aug 26, 2010 3:21:43 GMT
All the punks are from the west, I'm guessing, the official s (in blue uniform) also from the west. The rest from Eastberlin? I went to Berlin the first time when I was still in the army. Half the school went, in busses. We were carefully briefed on how to behave, what we were allowed to take, what we were allowed to say and then off we went, from Hanover. Can you imagine our surprise when we were greeted by the Eastgerman border guards with full rank and name They just knew everything. And this was at the normal border between west and east, not the one in Berlin. I was one of those who never believed the separation was something indefinite. I always believed there'd be re- unification. I also never believed there'd be a war in Europe again (even though the writing was on the wall when Tito died)...
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Post by bjd on Aug 27, 2010 8:55:31 GMT
Wasn't the Wall a bizarre concept? I can't say I agree with you, Lola. It wasn't a bizarre concept. It was a prison wall, made to keep people inside East Germany, East Berlin in particular. Twice in the 1970s, I took the train from Paris to Warsaw. Going through Berlin was really strange and interesting at the same time. You could see the subway station (Friedrichstrasse) that was closed off. Once the train pulled in to E Berlin, it stopped for ages. All our papers were checked. We had to buy a transit visa. Then Vopos (Volkspolizei) walked over the top of the train cars, checked underneath too -- just to make sure nobody was trying to sneak into East Germany.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 27, 2010 9:35:05 GMT
I drove to Berlin once, obviously through East Germany. The border control was a dazzlingly lit no man's land (this was around 3am) and you had to stop at a little control cabin where your passport was taken from you and put on an enclosed conveyor belt which carried it to the second post about 200 meters farther. In the meantime, you had to go into another little cabin and pay the transit visa fee, while wondering if you would ever see your passport again. Everything went all right, though, but I could see that during the middle of the day, the whole thing might take an hour or more, so it actually wasn't bad to go through in the middle of the night.
It was still with a major sigh of relief that we drove into West Berlin a couple of hours later.
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Post by hwinpp on Aug 27, 2010 9:45:39 GMT
I remember the conveyor belt.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 28, 2010 14:38:35 GMT
I went to Berlin the first time when I was still in the army. Half the school went, in busses. HW, you say "school" -- were you all cadets, or full-fledged army? Did you go in uniform or civvies? Then Vopos (Volkspolizei) walked over the top of the train cars, checked underneath too -- just to make sure nobody was trying to sneak into East Germany. That's interesting, Bjd. One always thinks of people trying to get into the west, but surely there were people who were desperate to get back to family in the east.
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Post by lola on Aug 28, 2010 15:24:41 GMT
K, in the 5th photo, did you interpret the seated man as stealing from the other one?
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Post by bjd on Aug 28, 2010 15:44:15 GMT
Bixa, I was being sarcastic about people trying to go East. I should have put a
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 28, 2010 16:03:31 GMT
;D Don't joke with the literal-minded!
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2010 17:52:40 GMT
K, in the 5th photo, did you interpret the seated man as stealing from the other one? That is a distinct possibility, especially if he had beer in his pocket.
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Post by lola on Aug 28, 2010 21:55:39 GMT
The cans and bottles are dispiriting.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2010 22:06:38 GMT
Scandinavia is worse in that department.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 30, 2010 15:32:11 GMT
The cans and bottles are dispiriting. Actually, I believe they have spirits in them. I was one of those who never believed the separation was something indefinite. I always believed there'd be re- unification. HW, did you believe this because of indications you picked up while living in Germany, or was it sort of a gut feeling? Kerouac, are you eventually going to reveal which pictures are East and which are West? Also, do you have any more of the photos? Sorry to be greedy, but they're really great.
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Post by gertie on Aug 31, 2010 1:36:48 GMT
Funny, I would have put all but the pictures of the diners with the red chairs in the resto in the group of pictures as being from East Berlin. I would assume the uniformed were perhaps border guards, and what looks to me like fashions from the early 70s generally worn by those in the other pictures as being from East Berlin. Of course, that might be the stereotypes we saw of East Berlin back in that period talking and styles might have been vastly different in Berlin at that time. I can only say the shaggy hair, leather jackets, dark colors, plaids, shoes, and hats in all but the two red chair photos would have been something only seen by the fall of the Berlin Wall on hippy holdovers from the 70s, at least in my area, or perhaps the homeless. The ladies in bright dresses is more what was worn in my area in the late 80s.
You must tell us the correct answer soon! From what you say, I guess the pictures with the prominent trash are actually Western Berlin?
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Post by hwinpp on Aug 31, 2010 3:10:12 GMT
Yes, and a lot of hope of course. In my opinion split countries will always re- unite if the parts are big enough and are allowed to preserve their common culture. That will be the way with the Koreas eventually and even Taiwan.
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Post by bjd on Aug 31, 2010 11:23:47 GMT
I would guess that the men in uniforms have something to do with transportation -- trains or buses or something. Border guards would have had khaki coloured uniforms.And that the bums with the beer and dogs were in the West. Not that people didn't drink in the East, but I think they would have been in trouble with the police. The countries behind the Iron Curtain tended to be neater and grayer.
Hmm, the people in the restaurants are a bit hard to guess, but perhaps I would put them in East Berlin too. Mind you, if you look at West Germans celebrating the fall of the Wall in 1989, they look a bit like that too. But, these look rather old-fashioned.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 31, 2010 12:48:43 GMT
The restaurant people were in the East, the drunks and other bench sitters in the West, the guards were in the West. Yes, bjd, as I mentioned at the start, the restaurant people looked they were 20 years in the past -- but at least East Berlin was clean and tidy.
I will find some more pictures soon.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 13, 2011 14:58:06 GMT
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Post by bjd on Aug 13, 2011 15:28:46 GMT
People forget so quickly. There are also Russians nostalgic for the Communist era, even for that monster Stalin.
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Post by hwinpp on Aug 16, 2011 6:19:06 GMT
I went to Berlin the first time when I was still in the army. Half the school went, in busses. HW, you say "school" -- were you all cadets, or full-fledged army? Did you go in uniform or civvies? I was still a cadet. And we were all wearing civvies, and we weren't allowed to take anything that could connect us to the army. They still knew. They'd address us with our rank and name when they came into the busses ;D Good intelligence work.
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Post by nycgirl on Aug 16, 2011 6:30:27 GMT
Excellent photos. I agree with Bixa, these really have the look of movie stills.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 17, 2012 5:39:59 GMT
I will find some more pictures soon.
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Post by fgrsk8r1970 on Apr 23, 2013 13:54:34 GMT
Hi there - I am new to the board and am browsing through some older threads - so I hope you don't mind that I am bumping this one, but I actually went into East Berlin once in 1986 on our "final school trip" when I was 16. It was quite different for us but some of the above resonates too. We were prepped what would happen at the border, what to say (or basically not to say), I remember we had to exchange a certain amount of Deutsch Marks to their worthless currency (around 15 or 20 DM i think) BUT - we were not allowed off the bus ;-) they knew how to make money. Anyway - we got to the border, the official came in and looked at our "Personalausweis" (ID cards) and they rolled mirrors under the bus to check for whatever it is they check for. Once we were cleared we did our tour of East Berlin. It was quite the shock for us teenagers as it looked like 1942, drab and gray. It didn't help that is was drizzling of course. Again we were not allowed to get off the bus or even stop for a monument to take pictures, so we had no interactions which now I think was sad (back then all we wanted was to get back to West Berlin so we could roam, shop and have a good time in the evening) We did tours in West Berlin too and I remember those more positively. Maybe it was the "no-knowledge" mind of a 16 year old teenager but I did really like West Berlin with all it's grittiness but also vibrant culture.
I have photos - I have to scan them.... The quality is poor as you can imagine. The kind of cameras we kids had back then LOL. I was lucky to have one at all!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 23, 2013 14:11:14 GMT
Any photos would be great! I have some more photos somewhere, but I am just not organized. I actually did manage to spend some of the worthless currency on a sausage and beer at a street stand at Alexanderplatz, and I also bought some notebooks and postcards at the department store there. Everything was safely behind the counter and you had to ask salespeople who looked more like guards if you wanted something. I was terrified -- as my schooling had programmed me to be.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 23, 2013 14:15:14 GMT
Hello, fgrsk8r1970 (ha -- just figured out your handle). Please, bump anything any time you feel like it! There are some great threads all over the port & its nice to have them brought back to everyones attention.
So interesting that you also went to East Berlin in '86 -- can't wait to see the pictures.
If it's okay to ask: are you from Germany or were you a US military dependent?
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Post by fgrsk8r1970 on Apr 23, 2013 14:23:58 GMT
I'll go through my backup drive Kerouac - I know I scanned them sometime ago when I brought all the "old" stuff to AZ with me.
Bixaorellana- thank you :-) and of course it is ok to ask - I am from Germany, born & raised but have been living in the US since 1996 and have been a US citizen now for 5 years (in May). My dad is actually visiting right now for 7 weeks as my mom passed away 2 years ago. So my poor husband has to listen to our small town Rhine dialect (Dad doesn't speak English - hubby doesn't speak German)
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Post by fgrsk8r1970 on Apr 23, 2013 14:33:10 GMT
I found them - not great quality and not as many as I hoped (most are of my class mates) I could have sworn there are more photos as we went to museums but again, back then I barely could afford to have one roll of film developed. I'll keep looking but until then: Brandenburg Gate (we were not allowed to stop in front of it) Ku'Damm from the top of the Europa Center The Wall The Wall both sides
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