please empty your brain below
Yes, Facebook and other social media. And the mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden.

Andrew | 11.06.15 - 7:59 a.m. | #

Visited the museum & prison last month and agree that it's a fascinating trip, away from the main tourist route.

Was 'fortunate' enough to have had a guide who was imprisoned there for a few years. He mentioned that as the prison was hidden in plain sight, all the apartment buildings around it were used to house Stasi staff & families, to ensure that all the windows that overlooked the prison were 'friendly'. A consequence of that is that apparently there are still a good number of ex-Stasi who live around, several of which are still unhappy with how things have turned out. There are occasional tales of them wrongly directing tourists away, or turning up on tours and causing problems.

Listening to our guide explain how a fairly trivial piece of resistance a day or two after the Prague spring led to imprisonment and the ruining of the rest of his life was... thought provoking.

Alex | 11.06.15 - 8:44 a.m. | #

I'd like to visit Berlin someday - there certainly seems plenty of interest. Oddly, perhaps, one of the things on my list would be to see one or two of the flakturms (WW2 anti-aircraft towers combining air-raid shelters) that were so enormous and robust that they defied all postwar attempts to demolish them.
I was in Trieste at the end of 2013 and visited a former prison for 'dissidents' in Mussolini's Italy:: the Risiera di San Sabba. That one had formerly been a rice processing works.

There were numerous individual memorials there, which seem less in evidence at the Stasi prison. Unless I'm missing the bigger picture, in that place itself *is* the memorial.

RogerW | 11.06.15 - 10:03 a.m. | #

Visited East Berlin a few times in the early to mid 1980's through Check Point Charlie, asking anyone anything like directions etc, had to be reported as the locals could get in trouble for just talking to a westerner.

Craig | 11.06.15 - 10:33 a.m. | #

"a Young Pioneers neckerchief is a reminder that the long-term objective was the infiltration of children's minds"

One wonders quite how the children whose minds were so infiltrated have adjusted to the way things are now.

Bronchitikat | Homepage | 11.06.15 - 10:39 a.m. | #

Excellent report DG. Thank you

Bernie | 11.06.15 - 11:23 a.m. | #

will be interesting to see when we'll be able to visit GCHQ headquarters in the same way

Stefan | 11.06.15 - 2:00 p.m. | #

Bronchitikat - Interesting point, especially bearing in mind Angela Merkel is an Ostie!!

Chris | 11.06.15 - 4:19 p.m. | #

Are you certain about the casino? Could be right, but Kasino in German also means an officers' mess.

Margaret | Homepage | 12.06.15 - 3:15 p.m. | #











TridentScan v2.10.0 | Privacy Policy