Zeitgeist Funf

Berlin-Magdalenenstraße U-Bahn

The Socialist-Realist overload left me wanting a bit of 'fresh' air and so I went for a wander around the neighbourhood. This seemed to need approval for a passing burst of torrential rain sent me scuttling for cover in the U-Bahn. Even the weather was an 'unofficial collaborator' that day.

Now as I had booked a hotel in advance and was paying with hard currency I was supposed to have been exempt from the daily currency exchange requirement. I got precisely nowhere trying to explain that to heavily armed civil servants ( or should that be People's Representatives) as I got off the train at Lichtenberg and had to change some cash at the 'official' East German rate of one Westmark to one DDR Mark. It was robbery as the unofficial rate at the time was about 6 or 7 to 1 and a little hard currency could go a long way. This was just as well because that's all I had. A little.

Once on the train I followed my bizarre Stadtplan that made no reference to West Berlin. As far as the Comrades were concerned they lived in Berlin and as there was no West Berlin there could be no East Berlin. To them the city's western boundary was the 'Anti-Fascist Protection Measure' that the rest of the world called the Wall. Looking back it's easy to snort at the madness of it all but in 1989 with that Stalinist fuckbake Honecker running the gulag it wasn't hard to imagine East Germany leading hard-line Communism into the 21st Century. Even the Soviets had all but given it up by that time and were being denounced by Honecker's mob as being too weak-willed and decadent to lead the revolution.

I wasn't thinking this at the time of course. I was too busy being stared at way more than usual. I was getting a bit bristly to say the least and I'm glad my stop was a short way along Frankfurter Allee. I know I was in a police state after all but I had to draw the line at being spied on by acid denim clad legions with bad mullets and Freddy Mercury moustaches.