I remember Elton John writing that song about “Nikita” (who worked as a guard in the other side). The music video showed a female soldier [in inaccurate and obsolete uniform from WW II Soviet Union issue]; so the BBC totally overlooked the fact that Nikita is androgynous name that either gender can have :laugh_at:
I think it was a good thing the people there are free to travel but feel the whole lot was hijacked by the USA and capitalism forced on many of these areas; within years the progressive minded youngsters of the West were being undercut for wages by those of the East and a lot of their public funded projects were closed down.
for instance Deutsche Bundespost Telekom stopped with their apprenticeship scheme and started getting ready for privatization as they had loads of ready trained engineers from the East who were more willing to work longer hours for less pay.
I was in Berlin in 2001 settiing up some equipment for a Turkish TV station (they’d gone from 1980s Soviet Era stuff to modern digital control and were really happy with it)); they were across the border as its where the Alexanderplatz Telekom broadcast tower is. There was of course no more wall and the only remnants other than the tourist bits were that the traffic signals are different (the green man is fatter and wears a very Germanic hat) but I still very much felt I was in Soviet East Berlin; there was still a definite difference in the economy and simmering tensions (the TV station was guarded by a dude in a moustache with a Glock 17L pistol; this was apparently in case of trouble with skinheads – although thankfully there was none and he spent 15 minutes each day playing dominoes with the local policeman; they would put their Glocks on the table (it looked like a scene from some movie, though thankfully no one got shot and it may as much have been a gesture of peace and trust between the two of them as well as having the pistols close to hand if stuff did kick off.
Even so I did feel safer working in the half-built basement where the studios and TX playout were than hanging around the top levels (TV stations with news departments get attacked the world over; especially if they are smaller ones giving a voice to a minority).
