scot47

I firts visited in 1963 en route to Warsaw. I remember the fascination a the train went through the divided city and the gurads all over Friedrichstrasse (in the East, ie the GDR).

I was back in 1964 when I went to meet John Peet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_P...%E2%80%931988)

Then in 1968-1969 I worked as an English Language Assistant in Wet Berlin.

Back in 1990 - in "The Last Summer of The GDR"

Various visits since then. I am now planning another visit (my last ?) in the autumn of 2009

Assanah

Berlin is awesome. Changed a lot scince 1990 though!

scot47

Incredible rate of change since 1945. I am appalled at how people in Britain are so ill-informed about Germany.

Gordon Barlow

Those were the days eh, scot! In 1963 I hitched over to Hamburg and bought a used VW Beetle and drove it to Berlin, where I met up with a chum and we drove back to London. Next visit was in '65, in the same car, with a girl I'd picked up in a Greek hostel and driven through Eastern Europe with. We entered the USSR from Finland, then came through Poland and East Germany, and I talked the border guards into letting us enter West Germany at Checkpoint Charlie.

The rule was that one had to go right around into Western Germany and enter West Berlin from that country, at one of the three autobahn points. But we turned up late at night, twenty minutes before our GDR visa was due to expire, very short of petrol and no GDR marks to buy any anyway. After a desperate argument in my pidgin German, the guards crossed their fingers and grumpily let us through. The US soldiers on the other side had a fit! "You can't enter here! You have to go round! You're lucky they didn't shoot you!" and similar. But they knew they couldn't send us back, so... One of my proudest moments, that! I was on a high for days. You know what it's like when you put one over officialdom!

scot47

Gordon. When you went through Checkppoint Charlie you entered West Berlin, not West Germany. The GDR and the Allied Occupying Powers always held that these were two separate entities. It was a very strange set-up. Surprising that it lasted so long.

I know that when I try to explain it all to outsiders that I see their eyes glaze over. Looking at a map can help. West Berlin was like an island surrounded by the GDR ("East Germany" in Daily Mail-speak)

Since unification and the take-over of the GDR by Bonn, Germany has prospered. No one can say that of GB since it lost its Empire ( although some, like Rees-Mogg are doing very well !)

Gordon Barlow

Yes, you're quite right, scot; but I count it as West Germany because I drove out on one of the three permitted autobahns without a hitch, and was not stamped out or held up at all when I finally reached West Germany. (Because I was already in WB - a different territory from West Germany though it was.) It must have been extremely rare for anybody to have reached FRG (if that's what it was called) from West Berlin without having entered the latter via one of those same autobahns. I do know that we weren't supposed to have crossed into WB at Checkpoint Charlie without having earlier crossed into East Berlin (which was East Germany, of course) there or at one of the other allied points. The US border guards there had certainly never heard of it being done - or so they said! What do you reckon?

mikelincs

Got a time travel machine then,

scot47

TYPO ! For a man of my great age what is ten years ?
No one took me up on "Wet Berlin" for West Berlin !

Of course it is 2019. As I count my bawbees and fend off requests for financial help from descendants, I may have to cancel my plans !

I was always intrigued by the naming conventions. As soon as you named the city, your political stance became clear. See this from Wikipedia -

Naming conventions

Most Westerners called the Western sectors "Berlin", unless further distinction was necessary. The West German Federal government officially called West Berlin "Berlin (West)", although it also used the hyphenated "West-Berlin", whereas the East German government commonly referred to it as "Westberlin".[ Starting from 31 May 1961, East Berlin was officially called Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR (Berlin, Capital of the GDR), replacing the formerly used term Demokratisches Berlin,or simply "Berlin", by East Germany, and "Berlin (Ost)" by the West German Federal government. Other names used by West German media included "Ost-Berlin", "Ostberlin", or "Ostsektor". These different naming conventions for the divided parts of Berlin, when followed by individuals, governments, or media, commonly indicated their political leanings, with the centre-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung using "Ost-Berlin" and the centre-left Süddeutsche Zeitung using "Ostberlin".

Novocastrian

In 1969 I entered Eat Berlin from Wet Berlin via Checkpoint Charlie.

BEVS

I hope you go on your trip

scot47

I first went in 1963 aged 16, in transit by rail to Warsaw (Hoek van Holland-Warszawa) i remember being surprised by the sheer number of heavily-armed oldies in Berlin-Friedrichstrasse Station and the delays in crossing the borders as the carriages and locomotive were checked and double-checked. Passnegers stayed on the train and had their passports and visas examined and stamped.

i went back in 1964 and saw more of the GDR ("wie es eigentlich gewesen ist"). I was part of a British Youth Group who went there as guests of the FDJ. They genuinely wanted to show us the side of East Germany (The GDR) that was not displayed in the British media Returned to Westberlin in 1968 to my first teaching job. Came to the attention of "The Organs" in East and West, but I remained a free agent. They probably decided that they had enough drunks on their books.

I returned to the GDR in "The Last Summer of the GDR". - 1990. A group of teachers went that year to Potsdam to teach English and Anglo-american Culture to German students and teachers at the University of Potsdam. My speciality was "The Lyrics of Country and Western Music" And that was where I developed an interest in Dean Reed, "The Red Elvis"

scot47

"oldies" is a typo for "soldiers"

dmu

Will you make it this year? My EasyJet flights MTP-Tegel-MTP in September have been cancelled. For various reasons I'm not booking for October (and no doubt they'll be cancelled anyway, if Covid has anything to do with it), and they don't do flights in the Winter/early Spring, so fingers crossed for next year. Hey ho....

scot47

Not in 2020. London's sabotage of the EHIC means that if I want to go next year I will have to pay privately for EHIC. That also will prevent me visiting children and grandchildren in Bulgaria.