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Pucker Factor Posted by EGD [Email] ![]() ![]() In Reply to: Train! (way long), EGD ![]() |
Taking a vacation in West Germany before the Wall fell with my brother-in-law, an Army guy in a unit that got to wear civilain clothes and keep their hair long. We're driving the best of the best -- a VW Polo and we're heading up from Nuremburg to West Berlin (to revisit our old stomping grounds).
Even though he's still in the Army, we're both 'civilians' traveling on regular passports. After we exit the West German frontier near Hof and are driving through the 1 km or so of No Man's land until we can get to the actual East German borders guards to get our transit visas for the trip to W Berlin. At this point, we're actually inside East Germany and there's no turning around. About 50 meters before we have to stop to show our passports my brother-in-law says, 'Sh$!. My ID's in my wallet!' His military ID, that is.
At this point, he/ we are beyond screwed because he's now traveling trhough East Germany as a 'civilian' when, in fact, he's in the Army and he's supposed to be on orders at all times when traveling through the GDR to W berlin. The rules require that he only use Soviet military checkpoints at Helmstedt (Checkpoint Alpha) to Checkpoint Bravo (Dreilinden in W Berlin -- FYI, Checkpoint Charlie was the transit point from W Berlin to E Berlin). Anyway, we're in deep trouble if they find out he's military. I'll just get thrown in jail -- he'll disappear because of his unit. If he's lucky enough to live and get thrown back to the West, if the Army found out it's adios military career.
Anyway, all's well that ends well. They didn't search our personal belongings or his wallet. We got through to Dreilinden unscathed but we bough a one-way airplane ticket from W Berlin back to W Germany to connect to our flight home. I drove the car back to Frankfurt alone -- I wasn't going to go through that again and I couldn't go through Soviet checkpoints on his orders because I was a civilian and it would've had to be approved well ahead of our travel time.
I laugh about it now...
posted by 192.31.10...
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