I was born, I grew up during the Cold War. I can still remember the fear for the arsenal of nuclear weapons of the Warsaw Pact and the slow approach after the START and SALT agreements. When the wall fell in 1989 I went, together with two friends, for the first time to the East, to Berlin. What I noticed at that time was the big difference between both parts. In East Berlin, time seemed to have been standing still… Lots of houses still showed the scarves of the war, which ended over forty years earlier.
Meanwhile, many years have passed. During these years I’ve visited Prague (former Czechoslovakia, now Czech Republic) many times, and saw it change. I have business relations in the neighbourhood of Dresden (former DDR) en I’ve met a friend who grew up behind the Iron Curtain.
A part out of nostalgia, a part out of interest to know how the former DDR (GDR) is doing now, over 20 years after ‘die Wende’, I had a short vacation in Thüringen, Sachsen and Sachsen-Anhalt. A short vacation, but a huge amount of photos, so I will be splitting them into multiple blog posts, which I will publish over the next days.
Following blog posts are part of the report of this trip: The Iron Curtain; Border Crossing Marienborn; Buchenwald, Dora-Mittelbau; Bunker Kossa and Road trip in the former DDR (GDR).
Eddy
