The 1948 Show - Crossing the Border

Back to Day One

The first day of my trip to the German Democatic Republic and the People's Republic of Poland started with me leaving Bolton by bus at 10.50 and arriving in Ostend by ferry at 04.30 the following morning to begin Day 2.

Day Two: Friday, 20th April (Good Friday) - Crossing the Border
We left Ostend at 05.23 on a through train to Köln (Cologne). This arrived five minutes late but still made the connection with the Deutsche Bundesbahn "InterCity" to Hannover. We'd obviously carried on drinking on the ferry to Ostend as the diary records: "Hungover in Hannover"!
There was no time for a restortative coffee however as we left Hannover immediately on the 1313 to Berlin, which at least had a restaurant car - and a rather splendid art deco one at that, provided by Mitropa, the on-train catering company of the East German Deutsche Reichsbahn.

The MITROPA restaurant car on the train to Marienborn

Although the train was bound for Berlin, we had to alight at the frontier station of Marienborn

A word here about crossing the border: Once the train crossed the border into the DDR it would not stop again until it reached West Berlin, even important cities such as Magdeburg were not served, to minmise the risk of any east German citizens illegally leaving the country via West Berlin. At Marienborn the train stopped at a special platform, remote from the rest of the station. Passengers alighting were initially approached by platform staff and asked to confirm their destinations. If approved, you were directed to the exit gate from the platform, where your ticket was checked by a uniformed official. You then passed up a flight of steps into the border control area. 
Here a border guard in a glass-fronted cubicle asked for your passport. He scrutinized it very carefully - his gaze passing from your passport photo to your face several times until he was sure the two matched. He also asked you to confirm your destination and the purpose of your visit. (To be fair this wasn't uncommon in western Europe at the time - I recall having to justify myself and my journey to a Dutch border guard at Hook of Holland station on an earlier trip).

When he was satisfied, he must have pressed a hidden button as a drawer mysteriously opened in the wall behind him into which he placed your passport.  This was quite stressful as the one thing a traveller should never do is lose sight of his passport, but it was obviously stressful for the border official as well, who looked very uneasy until the drawer re-opened and he could retrieve the documents. He was presumably worried that by passing the passport through to the back office he had somehow accepted it as valid, but if whoever was double-checking did find something wrong he would then be in deep trouble!

After passport control the next step was customs. These were very thorough, with all bags having to be unpacked and the contents inspected. This, remember, was on entry to the country and the authorities clearly took a very great interest in what you might be trying to bring in.

One of the things you couldn't bring in was East German currency, so the next step was to the currency exchange office. Officially the East German mark was equivalent to the West German (at the time about 3.75DM to the £). It's street value was far less of course hence the need to control the import and export of money.

When all these formalities were completed, you were free to leave the controlled area and pass through to the domestic side of the station, although with typical Germanic thoroughness there was one final gate to pass through, and one final passport and ticket check!

One feature of visits to the "eastern bloc" in those days was the fine collection of passport stamps you acquired. Here are some from the following year's trip:

All this took exactly two minutes longer than the time allowed to catch our connecting train to Halberstadt (although I was pretty sure that the girl on the customs check unnecessarily delayed me because she was enjoying my company!).  This meant we had to go for a beer while awaiting the next train. It was pretty unremarkable stuff. Although most towns in the DDR had their own brewery there was little competition between them and no competition at all on price, with beer costing an inconvenient 51 pfennings (for 25cl) everywhere in the country.

Due to missing the direct train we had to adjust our route and go via Magdeburg, but I'll tell you about that next time.