Foreign Aid - Perils of the Berlin Wall

This is a continuation of my previous blog 'A Taste of Danish - Part III'. As the wall was gradually being built there were, for a few weeks, quite a number of  secret paths that could be used to get to East-Berlin to meet with my Tormentor - my beloved sister Gisela. By the end of August this crossing line dried up and we were, as it is, incommunicado. Yes, one could send letters - but they would take weeks to arrive on the other side and were heavily censored. One had to be really careful what to write about - it would either be blacked out or the letter would be destroyed altogether. I think it's called censorship.
The seemingly biggest problem Gisela had then was how to wipe her bottom and wash her cloths! At the ripe old age of thirty five one would have thought she'd worked out how to wipe her bottom and launder her cloths!!
But NO - she had gotten soft! Only fourteen years earlier she was quite accustomed to wipe her bottom with torn up, crumpled newspaper and use whatever soap was on hand to wash her cloths in a bucket of cold water.

A Russian Mini-Tank in disguise

Luxuries make you soft and less resilient! Gisela by now had acquired a motor vehicle - I don't know whether I would call it a car - it was really more of a small tank disguised as a passenger vehicle than anything else. Never mind, she loved it and it made her SOFT.
Funny how little things can impede your enjoyment of daily life. Gisela was hankering for decent toilet paper and good washing powder. The stuff produced in East Germany just didn't cut the mustard for her - it didn't get whites white and didn't make the colours sparkle. Besides, the 'capitalist bourgoise' laundry powder from the West had additives that left the clothes smelling, well tantalisingly perfumed.

East German Laundry Powder - very attractive packaging!

West German Laundry Powder Effort

Here you have it! East vs West in both the packaging and advertising stakes. No wonder the East had to join the West to get some  zing into peoples life.

Meanwhile, my correspondence with Lise got somewhat frantic, her parents had reneged on their promise to let her come to Berlin for Christmas. They positively freaked out from what they saw in their newspapers. Tanks on both sides of the wall, American and Russian propaganda in overdrive and newspapers embellishing it to the hilt to sell more papers. If one believed the hype spruiked in the papers World War III was only a few weeks away. There was no way they would let their little girl venture into a war zone.
By the end of September things had settled down into a normal daily routine of nothingness. The wall was a fact, the tanks had returned to barracks and everybody got on with life as usual. In early October a letter arrived from Lise stating she would be coming, arriving the week before Christmas.  Suddenly, mum was somewhat delighted that the girl would be coming. I didn't click till much later because mum had been very apprehensive about the visit when I first told her upon my return from Denmark.

Gedser Rail-Ferry Terminal

It was quite a journey in 1961, the East Germans made it quite inconvenient for people to travel from Copenhagen to West Berlin. First, one had to catch a train from Copenhagen to Gedser, a ferry point at the southern tip of Langeland (a small island south of Zealand where Copenhagen is located). In the good old days, before the Wall, the train would be shunted onto the ferry, off at the other end and continue to Berlin. But now one boarded the ferry for the three hour sail to Warnemuende near Rostock. And here the real fun started.

Transit passengers disembarked and were greeted by a delightful immigration set-up, similar to the one on the left (the actual picture is of the last railway station in East Berlin - Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse) but they were essentially all the same, prefab and built to just one pattern.
Ironically, there were five or six lanes for incoming travellers (people actually wishing to visit East Germany) and three lanes for transit passengers. Who in their right mind would want to enter East Germany? Naturally, the Stasi officers in the visitors lanes were run off their feet - with boredom. Transit folks were 'invited' to queue in the open at their 'leisure' to wait their turn to go through passport control getting a transit visa and then customs, that would rifle through their luggage.

Knut - the cute! I am soooo shy

Berlin Zoologischer Garten

Nobody could work out why since passengers were 'guided' to the train, which was securely locked once everybody was on board. The train would then proceed at a rapid snails pace towards Berlin, where it terminated at Ostbahnhof, located almost in the middle of East Berlin. There passengers would disembark, cross the platform into a small feeder train (just two carriages) that would eventually bring them to the then main railway station in West Berlin - Berlin Zoologischer Garten. And guess what? The Berlin Zoo of Knut fame is right next to the railway station - what a coincidence.
However, nothing was easy in those days! What should have been a short fifteen minutes trip took over an hour, because the little feeder had to stop at Friedrichstrasse for the immigration and customs exit controls PLUS a thorough search of the train by machine gun toting soldiers looking for any possible escapees. The only bonus was that passengers were allowed to stay on the train whilst officers stamped their passport, crossed them off a list of passengers having boarded at Warnemuende and customs only glanced at the luggage.
Now, you work it out for yourself! Was all that checking and re-checking just due to the infamous German Thoroughness or Communist Paranoia?

And with that my friends - time has beaten me once again! I have to leave you hanging in true Dickens style and continue next week.