I like these jaunts in the former East Germany.....

I had a tip-top marzipan ice cream in Lubeck. It seemed rude not to.

Ooh, that does sound nice :thumb

Years ago all the best German ice cream shops (eisdiele) used to be run by Italians but I've noticed over the last few years that chains seems to be in the ascendancy with their brightly coloured, E number & sugar-laden offerings :(

What were we talking about ? Ah yes, East Germany...
 
Just generally thinking about German food and beer has got me definitely in the mood..
 
spaghetti ice

German ice-cream parlour now your talking, spaghetti ice
 

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I was struck by the number of people in their 50’s and 60’s in the former East Germany who saw nothing good about unification at all. To them, everything before was organised and ‘reliable’, working to some sort of (to me at least) horrible unseen Socialist clockwork. They didn’t seem at all interested that their son or daughter was now a nurse in Canada or working in Cologne or just travelling Australia, being free to go anywhere they liked. To them it was now all much harder, which I guess the free economy is when you are not at all ready for it.

East Germany in its ‘heyday’ was in many respects a socialist paradise - just about everything was done for citizens, free health care and education and stability and security.
I can understand the many people who had a great fear of unification after 40 years of living a certain way.
 
East Germany in its ‘heyday’ was in many respects a socialist paradise - just about everything was done for citizens, free health care and education and stability and security.

Take a look at a few German films set in the period - The Lives of Others, Traumfabrik and Barbara.
 
Take a look at a few German films set in the period - The Lives of Others, Traumfabrik and Barbara.

BBC had a similar film the other week - Balloon, about a family seeking to escape from the east to the west.
Maybe still on iplayer. True story, good film.
 
East Germany in its ‘heyday’ was in many respects a socialist paradise - just about everything was done for citizens, free health care and education and stability and security.
I can understand the many people who had a great fear of unification after 40 years of living a certain way.

Have a read of: Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell; shortly afterwards the two Germanies reunited, and East Germany ceased to exist. In a country where the headquarters of the secret police can become a museum literally overnight, and one in 50 East Germans were informing on their countrymen and women, there are a thousand stories just waiting to get out. Anna Funder tells extraordinary tales from the underbelly of the former East Germany - she meets Miriam, who as a 16-year-old might have started World War III, visits the man who painted the line which became the Berlin Wall and gets drunk with the legendary 'Mik Jegger' of the East, once declared by the authorities to his face to 'no longer to exist'. Written with wit and literary flair, Stasiland provides a rivetting insight into life behind the wall.
 
Another one with links to the east and Berlin
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Podcast on BBC Sounds - 'Intrigue: The tunnel'.. excellent listening.

I really liked 'The Lives of Others'. Haven't seen those other films so will have a look. I did like 'Goodbye Lenin'.
 


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