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BERLIN DDR MUSEUM
Remembering Good Old Socialism Days
I’m
sure like most people, you often find yourself sitting in your office
cubical, worrying about car payments and the mortgage crisis,
do you really need HBO on your cable bill, is there such a thing as
debtor’s prison?... and your mind wonders wistfully, what was
life really like under socialism in East Germany. Well, aside from
watching dvds of “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold” you
can now visit the DDR Museum in the heart of Berlin. Located on the
bank of the Spree River where it flows under the main avenue of Karl-Liebkneecht
Str. just across from where the cruise boats pass the Berliner Dom
Cathedral and a few blocks from the Museum Insel art museums (see Pergamon
Museum and Neues
Museum).
Created
as a “hands on” experience the Berlin DDR Museum
is a somewhat playful journey through the days of the grand communist/social
experiment which lasted from the end of WWII to the fall of the wall
in 1989, the days of the Berlin airlift, John F. Kennedy's
famed Berliner visit (see Kennedys
Museum) and testosterone pumped
women Olympic competitors.
Here
you will
find an
intact living
room
from a GDR
apartment,
look
into
the
tiny
back
yard “dacha” that
served as a vacation spots. Take a virtual drive in a notorious "Trabi" Trabant
car, and take a ride
with the kids through a concrete
block
apartment complex. Watch East German television programs and propaganda
newsreels. Drawers and nooks
hide
the secrets
of East German life under the DDR. (Okay, to avoid confusion DDR/GDR
are the same thing. Deutsche Demokratische Republik, German Democratic
Republic = Communist/Socialist East Germany). Be wiretapped by Stasi
secret police bugging equipment, where every whisper of discontent
was listened to by spies.
What
is perhaps most fascinating about the exhibits and artfacts on display
are how the socialist east in the latter days, struggled desperately
to keep up with western capitalism products, services and styles
that more and more where sought by the citizens behind the wall and
barbed
wire. Advertising and modern marketing techniques, design and innovation
attempted to prove that life under the socialist state was good,
but the practical never kept pace with the promises. On the other
hand,
as long as you didn’t bad mouth the state where the Stasi was
within earshot, you didn’t have to worry about the rent, in
your state provided shoebox apartment with paper thin concrete walls
(see Ostel Berlin DDR Hostel).
The Berlin DDR Museum is open from 10 to 8 weekdays and until 10
pm on Saturdays. The nearest Bahn stop is the Hackesher Markt or
bus stops
at Spandauer Straße. On busy summer
days you may even get to experience what the common East German socialism
custom
of standing
in line was like as the DDR Museum, can be quite popular and easy
to get to. Next door door
is the giant fish aquarium of the Aquadom (see Sea
Life Berlin), and just across the river is the Berliner
Dom (see Berliner
Dom Cathedral. © Bargain
Travel Europe
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DDR Museum
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See Also:
BERLIN ACTIVE TOURING - SIGHTJOGGING
ORANIENBURGER
- BERLIN
PARTY BARS AND PUBS
KAVALIERHAUSER
CASTLE HOTEL - BRANDENBURG
AIR
BERLIN-LTU Dusseldorf to Berlin
BERLIN FILM MUSEUM AT POTSDAMER PLATZ
BUILDING THE BERLIN WALL - 50th ANNIVERSARY 2011
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on a Budget with Bargain Travel Europe and also visit Bargain
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