Crossing the Berlin border on the S-Bahn (late '80s) - 289 sec This was one of the standard East/West Berlin crossings: the S-Bahn Friedrichstrasse station. The station was in East Berlin and was itself divided in half - one part being the end station of an eastern line, the other part being the end station of a line going to West Berlin. To walk from the "eastern" to the "western" part of the station you had to go through the passport and customs controls, obviously. On the "western" part of the station one could purchase things like cigarettes and alcohol duty-free (for western marks) so it was not uncommon to see drunks from West Berlin popping in at the Friedrichstrasse station buying some liquor and going back West (no control). That sort of folklore went way beyond James Bond, IMHO :-)
This clip begins at Friedrichstrasse as we've just hopped on a westbound S-Bahn. Soon after the train takes off, we are inside the wall, you can see the no man's land as the tracks run parallel to it for a while. The actual border is seen just before pulling into the first station in the West (Lehrter Stadtbahnhof) - it's the boundary between the water and the land in the canal we cross over. Another train is leaving back to Friedrichstrasse (carrying those drunks and cigarette smugglers perhaps?) and we walk closer to the Reichstag from where one can see the train tracks we've just ridden along. Another S-Bahns go both ways plus a random long distance train leaving East Berlin.
NOTE: I added a reverse angle view in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwzFBATwXuY Auteur : JanPB Tags:BerlinWallMauerFriedrichstraßeLehrterStadtbahnhofS-BahnGrenzübergang
