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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 thw cruise boats pass the Berliner Dom Cathedral and a few blocks from the Museum Insel art museums (see Pergamon 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, nominated as the best European Museum for 2008, can be quite popular and easy to get to. © Bargain Travel Europe

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