I was watching “Spy Game” tonight and had a question about the Berlin Wall. I have heard of Checkpoint Charlie and was wondering what would valid reasons be for crossing the border between East and West Berlin or even East and West Germany?
How often did people cross, was it a common occurence?
Thanks,
MC$E
Well, I worked in East Germany for a while (it’s a long story), and crossed Checkpoint Charlie about 150 times (in the late 70s). Note that Checkpoint Charlie was the place that non-Germans could cross between the West and the East.
Well, there was usually a line of people waiting to cross. Why?
[ul]
[li]Tourism. You could buy a “day visa” at the border for 10 Marks, and could spend the day in East Berlin looking around. There were always a bunch of people doing this.[/li][li]Work. I was working for a West Germany consortium that had a contract with the East German government to build something near the Polish border. So a whole bunch of us came across CC and satyed in the East for several days at a time…[/li][li]Business. Contrary to a lot of the propaganda, the East German Government did a fair amount of business with the West – heck, most of the renovated East Berlin was designed by the Swedes. So on any given day, there were people crossing the border to go to meetings.[/li][/ul]
And as I recall, Checkpoint Charlie felt much more oppressive than you get the sense in the movies.
Thanks Scruff, that makes sense. I had somehow gotten the idea of an impenetrable “Iron Curtain”… I guess I watch too much TV 
MC$E
In the 80’s I rode the train, or maybe it was the subway, from East to West Berlin en route from Warsaw to Paris. It was uneventful.