I’ve been working on an East German version of my West German cold war location map and boy, it is a lot harder to try and find almost any kind of cold war locations there now!
It’s like they have almost erased everything dating from that period. As Google maps only goes back to 2010 in some cases it’s not a lot of help when trying to locate things.
Wall down, Communism gone, in 1996 we took the children on a three week grand tour. Having taken Alien Minor 1 to (at this point the browser took a brain fart and by the time I'd restarted the tablet I'd forgotten I'd started this reply) Braunlage at the age of a couple of months, we went back. Surprised to find the landlord of the restaurant was ex-13/18H and after amalgamation, we shared a regimental association.
From the top of the derelict ski jump, we looked into the East and remembered how 13 years earlier, we'd not been allowed at the bottom, sitting within 1Km of the IGB. It occurred to me that the Brocken was only a few kilometres distant, and no longer proscribed, so we headed off.
Crossed the former IGB from Niedersachsen into Sachsen Anhalt and the class 1 western road instantly became candystripe due to generations of neglect in the east. On the bend on the former border was either a genuine or a faithful reproduction Gulaschkanone in use as something akin to an Imbißstube.
Got to the village at the foot of the Brocken. Like something straight out of Hansel and Gretel. Where to park the car? It seemed like every house in the village had turned the garden into a rather expensive car park. They may have been Commies for fifty years, but they'd always been Germans, and now they were capitalists again.
In German, "Isn't there a funicular railway to the top of the Brocken?" There was. Gadgy gave me directions. "It will cost you an arm and a leg."
"So how do we get to the top?"
"You can walk" (it was mid-afternoon. The nippers were 14 and 12...) "or you can pay."
We didn't go up the Brocken. Pity. Then it occurred to me that there was no hint that the Commies had ever been. Except, we learned, at one end of the village there had been a barracks, built of wood, now comprising nothing but postholes. I've ever since imagined the Red Army living in Stalag Luft III style accommodation .