People To People 1989

"West Berliners seem pushy. Stay off of their bike paths or they will run you over. WB more built up. EB more trees. WB many expensive cars (Ferraris). EB all cars Trabant...Rows of houses on EB side of Wall are abandoned and look black and dingy. It's obvious some were once magnificent homes. Many people ride bikes...Police Patrol EB more frequently than they do in WB. I see groups of 3 or 4 around all the time."

"I fell asleep on the way to Checkpoint Charlie. The longest darkest hours I have spent yet were at Checkpoint Charlie (a little melodramatic weren't we Lou). When they woke me up at Checkpoint Charlie, I didn't have that usual tiredness, I was up and alert. As we passed the sign and the US guy, I was scared. The bus was dead silent."
We were warned not to make any trouble at the border crossings, and this was our first one.
"We were going extremely slow. We pulled up behind some other buses. I wasn't paying attention, and when I looked up, I was looking into the face of a man in a green uniform. Gradually the din arose around me...

Then we had to fill out visas and after that, a woman came on the bus and stared each one of us in the face to make sure we were the same people as our passports. It took about 1.5 hours to get through the checkpoint.

After getting to the hotel, I went out swimming. The lake didn't really have a beach. Women and teens were swimming naked, which was a completely foreign concept to us. The bottom sloped gradually away from shore, so 100 yards out and the water was only up to my waist. The water was really dingy like there was severe industrial pollution. Jess went swimming with me and we got Tania and Jay soaked. Had goo for dinner. Walked along path with Jessica, Lisa, and Dan.

# posted by llamoure @ 9:27 PM