Snow day..no music lessons..on to east Germany!

We are covered in snow today. It hasn't stopped. So around here when it snows like this, school is canceled.  And so are the music lessons. So I'll write a bit.

I thought I might tell some of the things that were part of the USO tour I took. All of the very busy tales I have to tell took place in the 60's, 70's and 80's. Things slowed down in the 90's and onward. 

I was part of a USO tour in the 60's. We spent almost all of the tour in Germany. We went to Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfort, etc. and Berlin. Our trip into west Berlin was memorable, for me. And then into east Berlin.  We no longer have the wall there. But, when we were there, the wall was very much there. After we performed in many places in west Germany we traveled to west Berlin. In order to get to west Berlin we had to travel through east Germany.  We traveled by train. When the train went into the eastern part it was stopped by Russian soldiers. Just the usual thing, apparently. We were fairly young and peering out the window at the soldiers, we girls realized that they were also very young. So even though we were "enemies" at that time, we girls and those boys had fun peeking and thinking (who knows) how dangerous it was?? I believe the train sat there for at least 2 hours. Then we were allowed to continue. We had a lot of fun in west Berlin.  There were lots of places to shop, to see, modern, restaurants, lots of people. Just a bustling place. About 4 of us girls decided that we wanted to see the wall, so we began walking. We finally made it to the Brandenburg gate.  There wasn't much to see there.  Just guards and a big wall.

However, the next day the army took us into east Berlin.  On a big army bus. We went through "checkpoint Charlie" and I was flabbergasted at the way it looked there.  How naive was I??  There were no shops, restaurants, bustling people..none of that there.  Many buildings were still in the state they had been after being bombed in WWII. (Remember now this is the early 60's). The Russians would only allow us to go to a large cemetery called (I believe) the Garden of Memories.  Our bus pulled in there and we were allowed to get out and walk around. That was the only place we were allowed to go in east Germany. While there, a young German couple saw us and came to talk. One of our USO members spoke German. They actually asked us if we would take them back across on our bus. They were about our age, so they could pretend to be one of us.  Well, of course there was no way that could happen. I've always remembered them. That picture is still clear as a bell in my mind. Them standing there looking at the bus as we pulled away. I thought about what their life was like and the hopelessness.

Well that depressing journey over, we crossed back into west Berlin and the bright lights and steins of beer.  Like night and day.  Wonder how it looks now.  Without the wall..