Unter den Linden, 1977
Me and Sandra in East Berlin
Peter Donnison took the photo
In 1977 Sandra and I drove to Kaarst in West Germany to see Peter Donnison, a friend from my school days and who I have kept in touch with after he left Bolton. In Kaarst the three of us decided it would be fun to drive to West Berlin, 110 miles behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany, a communist state officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In West Berlin we decided it would be even more fun to cross the Berlin Wall and go through the famous Checkpoint Charlie from West Berlin into East Berlin in the GDR.
The photo was taken in Unter den Linden, an iconic location in East Berlin with a view of the Brandenbug Gate at the end. Beyond it in the distance in West Berlin is the 1873 Berlin Victory Column. The Brandenburg Gate is a monument which, at the time, stood in a kind of 'no man's land' between east and west where you would be immediately shot by East German border guards if you tried to cross it (people were). Presumably many if not all of the people visible in the photo were East Germans prohibited from travelling to the West. We weren't, obviously, because we had come from the West and would soon go back.
The fronts of some of the buildings on the right of the photo were still peppered with bullet holes from WW2 when the Russian Army recaptured the city from the Wehrmacht. The three of us wandered around for a bit, went in an East German department store where I bought some very good plastic trays (which we still have). I think it was Centrum (in Alexanderplatz) run by a state-owned retail company. We then went back the way we came, through Checkpoint Charlie into West Berlin again.
It was a long drive from Kaarst, via Helmstedt in West Germany (close to the East German border) and then the 110 miles along a special 'transit corridor' across East Germany to West Berlin – a distance of 380 miles in Pete's orange VW Beetle sharing the driving. A round trip of 760 miles and worth it.
We all slept in the same big room at the Hotel Bogota just off the fabulous Kurfürstendamm. We didn't know then that this emblematic hotel housed a number of well-known artists over the years, including René Burri and Helmut Newton. Hotel Bogota closed permanently in 2013 but I still have the booking slip and other paperwork (somewhere).
I went again to Berlin in 1984 but this time only with Pete. We then drove through East Germany 120 miles to Dresden down in the south on what is now the A13. We had perhaps a couple of nights in Dresden then drove 220 miles west to Kassel in West Germany along what is now the A38, passing near Leipzig and Buchenwald concentration camp (in the distance thankfully). It was about 160 miles more back to Kaarst so total miles in Pete's red Opel: 380 + 120 + 220 + 160 = 880 miles. Somewhere in West Germany we (perhaps Pete) paid an on-the-spot fine when a patrol car stopped us for breaking the speed limit (Germany is not especially known for its speed limits).
East Germans tended to drive Trabants. I saw one two weeks ago at the Imperial War Museum of the North on a visit there with Sandra, Pete and Petra to whom he is married. The Trabant was manufactured in East Germany mostly unchanged for thirty years and symbolised its stagnant economy. The waiting list to buy a new one was 10-13 years. A few can be seen parked on the left of the photo. At one point during the drive from Berlin to Dresden a rainstorm came down and we noticed how the Trabants on the motorway either stopped or appeared to skid off. On the drive from Dresden to Kassel we stopped to fill the Opel at a filling station full of them. As we were filling up, what must have been a West German (dark suit and sunglasses) stopped in a big white Mercedes Benz convertible with the top down. Some things stick in your memory. In-car musical entertainment: 'I'm Still Standing' (1983).
