LL-L "History" 2009.01.25 (06) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 25 January 2009 - Volume 06
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From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.01.25 (05) [E]


Beste Ron,



You wrote:



I did once walk around off the beaten track in purely residential areas. I
could tell that people recognized me as being from the West and were
avoiding me, and there was the distinct possibility that I was being
followed.


I don't know what would have happened had the Internet been up and running
as it is now. At the time, simply communicating with outsiders was most
definitely not advisable, certainly not under a regime that arrested people
for merely waving across the border. Even just sending a letter from private
home to private home without family relationship could be dangerous,
especially a letter to West Germany. It was only in the waning few years
that one of my East German nieces started sending me letters to Australia.
She would have been more careful had I still lived in West Germany, because
young people were not exactly encouraged seek contacts with their Western
relatives. I believe it was during those years that Hanne, meanwhile having
reached pension age, began communicating with and visiting the West.



Thanks for your answer. I was asking this because I once heard that in the
few years prior to the reunification, there was quite a lot of "tourism"
going on between many Warsaw Pact countries and Hungary for example. For
business, for trade, for fun, for sheer tourism (or a mixture), I can't
tell, but I remember seeing a documentary in which hordes of Trabants were
crossing the Carpathians in order to visit Budapest. Guess most of them may
have been Polish, but maybe some were Eastern German or Czech too.



Kind greetings,



Luc Hellinckx

•

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