Wednesday morning, we signed up for a driving tour that followed the outline of the Berlin Wall, in a Trabant! For those of you who are not car buffs, the Trabant was the standard car in the GDR from the early 1960s until reunification. Over that period, the car basically did not change. The one we drove was the 601 model, which was by far and away the most popular. It featured a 26 horsepower, 2 stroke engine, a four speed transmission with the gear shift on the steering column and completely manual everything. The turn signals did not turn off when you turned, the windshield wipers were turned on manually, but seemed to be comfortable turning off randomly on their own, of course there was no power steering and we had no idea if there was heat. The car was so thin, that the accelerator was shifted to the right of the driver’s seat and basically it sat in front of the space between the two front seats. Suffice to say, it wasn’t the most comfortable ride. It somehow managed to feel smaller than a SmartFor2 (which by the way has the fewest horsepower of any gas car sold in the US at 70hp), lower than a Mini, and more rickety than a Model-T. In the photo below, I have moved the driver’s seat as far back as it goes (and for those who don’t know me, I am 5’8″ or 173cm). We loved it!

The tour guide drove in a different car and spoke to us through the radio. She is Italian, living in Berlin and gives tours in English. I can’t even manage to learn enough Spanish to have a conversation and she is giving tours in her third language. Boy do I feel stupid. But the best part is that despite being in the car by herself, she was gesticulating with both hands, while driving. The tour was fascinating as it was primarily in East Berlin and she told us about quite a bit of the history.

On the way back to our apartment we stopped for lunch and had the traditional Turkish dish, Doner kebaps, which originated in Berlin. In the US we get a similar sandwich that we call a gyro (pronounced yeer-oh). It is basically a meat sandwich on pita bread (although Sue had a vegetarian one). Mine is the one on the right, it comes with the traditional nachos and nacho cheese. Sue’s came with French fries. (You can choose one or more of the nine or so different sauces. I had garlic and spicy.) They are delicious.

Saturday was our last day in Berlin and Sue made one last attempt to walk me into the ground in Berlin. (He is always a willing participant.) We started by walking from our place to the Stasi museum, which was about 9 miles across Berlin. We stopped along the way for some pizza. It was surprisingly good, and we found this fabulous photo on the wall.

The Stasi museum, was very interesting.  The Stasi had something like 90,000 employees and then 10 times that number as informers. The compound in Berlin, was huge, it included the administrative offices, housing for the staff, a hospital, schools and basically everything the employees and there families would need. I think they said it was 22 acres.

It seems as if anyone who was anyone in the GDR was an informer, even some of the people who were fighting the government were informing on their own organizations. Somewhat depressingly, the Stasi oversaw all types of surveillance and “education” of the dangers that were threatening the GDR. They started young with the Young Pioneers and groomed the children to inform against each other in order to “protect” the country. The surveillance techniques were all pervasive and while their technology was very antiquated even for the time, they made up for it with sheer numbers of people. There were stories about the people who worked there, the ones they spied on and the the ones that were targeted for imprisonment, blackmail or death. It was both fascinating and horrifying.

Notice the training hand grenade and the kids’ play tanks in the photos below.

After the museum, we headed home and packed, cleaned and got ready to head out Berlin. For dinner, we went to a local Indian restaurant. The food was very good, and we heard the best comment about food in Berlin from a young guy at the table next to ours. He said: “Berlin has great food, but none of it is German”. The same could be said about London.

By the end of the day, we had reached 12 miles, not a bad death march.

We both were very surprised at how much we liked the city and will definitely look to return – although not in November – way to cold and the days are very short.

Some random photos of beer, because it is Germany! The one called Porter Punsch is actually beer mixed with mulled wine. It wasn’t terrible, just a bit sickly sweet.

And here…the challenges of translation. In my head I am seeing a ball of pasta dough feeding itself into a pasta machine.