I remember hearing about an East Berliner who– just after the wall was breached– went to a bookshop in West Berlin and bought a copy of Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” which of course had been unavailable in the German Democratic Republic. The shop owner gave him a discount.
Of course there are those who have fond memories of the GDR and can only bring themselves to call the building of the wall “tragic,” while basically excusing the government that built it and killed more than 100 people trying to cross it.
Writing for The Morning Star, Neil Clark remembers those golden days before the wall fell and sheds a verbal tear or two for East German cuisine:
Instead of Western fast-food chains serving unhealthy junk food, the GDR, in common with other socialist countries, was full of publicly owned self-service restaurants where ordinary people could eat good hearty fare at affordable prices in a communal atmosphere.
For some reason, “ordinary people” gave up the “good hearty fare” at the first opportunity.
(Hat tip: Shiraz Socialist)
