Found the below video on an other forum. It is a Royal Military Police Video about how to travel from West Germany to West Berlin for British military personnel. Appears to be from the late 70's or 80's.
I have an uncle who was a civilian US Army employee based in Frankfurt. We took a family vacation to Europe in the summer of 1990. It was after the "fall" of the Berlin wall but before the reunification in October 1990. We took a train through East Germany to West Berlin for a day. There were entrepreneurs renting out hammers and chisels, and I got to chisel myself a few pieces of the wall.
When I was in high school, my family and I traveled around Germany in a Fiat RV with the family of a foreign exchange student we had hosted the year before. His dad was a longtime road-tripper, and he told us the story of having driven from West Germany to East Germany back during Communism. He said that crossing the border took 48 hours, and the border inspection process included physically removing the seats from his car.
I drove about an hour and a half into East Germany shortly after reunification. It was amazing how poor everything was: the autobahn had an 80 kph speed limit because it was so rough and bumpy. And there were no service stations to speak of. That's why I turned around and didn't go farther – I didn't know whether I could even get Bleifrei in the East.
I would love to go back today and see how everything in the East has changed.
Quote from: Road Hog on July 21, 2021, 05:50:29 PM
I would love to go back today and see how everything in the East has changed.
If you don't notice the signs letting you know you're entering a different state, you won't even realize you're passing from West to East of
vice versa.
One thing that stands out in my mind as sort of symbolizing how things have changed is that the street where Checkpoint Charlie was located has a museum on one side of the street and some souvenir and snack shops, including a Subway sandwich shop, on the other side of the street under the overall name "Snackpoint Charlie."
Quote from: 1995hoo on August 02, 2021, 08:34:38 AM
One thing that stands out in my mind as sort of symbolizing how things have changed is that the street where Checkpoint Charlie was located has a museum on one side of the street and some souvenir and snack shops, including a Subway sandwich shop, on the other side of the street under the overall name "Snackpoint Charlie."
Berliners have always had a somewhat 'avant guard' attitude towards life.
From what I am aware of, much of the routing of the former Wall is still there as parkways and memorials and so forth, including the 'Mauerweg' ('Wall Path'), a pedestrian and bicycle pathway that follows about 90% of the Wall's former 'No Mans's Land'. The long straight section of the A113 autobahn, running southsoutheastward from the A100 innerbelt towards the new airport, was built on the Wall's former death strip.
Mike
We're in a road movie to Berlin,
Can't drive out the way we drove in...
Quote from: GreenLanternCorps on July 16, 2021, 08:34:36 AM
Found the below video on an other forum. It is a Royal Military Police Video about how to travel from West Germany to West Berlin for British military personnel. Appears to be from the late 70's or 80's.
I was fascinated by that video, and sought out more. This one is a good one; watch how you can tell they've entered East Germany just by the camera bouncing:
Inside the A2 Helmstedt Marienborn Crossing there would have been a sign saying DDR Zero Tolerance DUI signs. http://www.autobahn-online.de/a24/a24.html One here is on the A24 Hamburg-Gudow West Germany East Germany Zarrentin Berlin Autobahn. (http://www.autobahn-online.de/a24/a24.html%20One%20here%20is%20on%20the%20A24%20Hamburg-Gudow%20West%20Germany%20East%20Germany%20Zarrentin%20Berlin%20Autobahn.)
Cleaned up the link for you: http://www.autobahn-online.de/a24/a24.html
Quote from: Road Hog on November 14, 2021, 01:23:43 AM
Cleaned up the link for you: http://www.autobahn-online.de/a24/a24.html
Thank you for the correction and the A24 is used for West Germany Hamburg-Lübeck Flensburg West Berlin Transit traffic via Schwerin DDR. However Danish military troops going to West Berlin will need to use Helmstedt Marienborn if allowed. Since Zarrentin Gudow lacks a Russian Army checkpoint officer. That's why you have military convoys use Marienborn Helmstedt. Ziesar Halfway point between Helmstedt & West Berlin