Previously: My Beers in the GDR, Part One: A working lunch in East Berlin, August 1989.
East Berlin: August, 1989.
Each Friday afternoon for three weeks my temporary employment with the East Berlin Parks Department was rewarded with a crisp 100 Ost Mark note bearing a dour visage of Karl Marx, apparently standard laborer’s wages, as processed by a harried clerk at the pay window who always made damn sure I signed for it.
For whatever reason, the GDR decided to pay “volunteers” like me. Consequently I’ve always included this work experience on job applications back home.
It’s a real eyebrow lifter.
The 1989 trip kicked off in late May when I flew into West Berlin. Three days later came a first glimpse of East Germany with a transit visa, which required immediate forward progress by train straight through East Berlin to Prague in Czechoslovakia for most of June, and then Moscow much of July.
East Bloc adventures paused for a week at the end of July. Having returned to West Berlin from the USSR by rail via Poland, I met my cousin Don, who also was traveling that summer, for catch-up time over copious quantities of Veltins Pils and homemade goulash at Dicke Wirtin on Savignyplatz.
Rested and refueled, I followed the pleasingly cloak-and-dagger instructions I’d been issued by Volunteers for Peace (VFP) and proceeded to a cold-water flat in Kreuzberg, where several of the Western volunteers for the work program were asked to meet.
We prepared a communal meal of pasta and salad, drank a few bottled beers that I’d packed, and chatted about the month to come. The night was spent curled up on the wooden floor, with occasional interruptions as our host tended to her baby.
Bread, jam and tea made a fine breakfast. We rode the subway back to Zoo Station, later to be immortalized in U2’s album Achtung Baby, and switched to the S-Bahn (regional rail) over the Berlin Wall to Friedrichstrasse station, situated in East Berlin but also serving as a West Berlin public transportation transfer stop as well as the primary border control point to East Germany.
Given one’s destination, the simple act of passing from one platform to another...Read more
