Dear Beamr and Less Hair,
I was part of a Special Tour Group of Americans including an
American retired General. We had started the tour in Helsinki,
and travelled by Finnish coach to Leningrad and Moscow. We
arrived LED hotel the day Mathias Rust landed his Cessna 172
on the bridge next to Red Square. I was told by a Finnish guide
friend of the Rust landing. Our Intourist KGB guide got very very
annoyed that I had the information, and she didn't. As the tour
progressed, I and two Americans (I knew well from previous
tours} got "Done over" by the KGB on the Brest border crossing
into Poland. Leaving Poland for the DDR I was addressed by the
Stasi border guard in German, saying he knew I spoke German.
I chose SXF/HEL/LHR/MAN with AY because the group were
leaving on AY SXF/HEL/JFK and I wanted the two Americans I
knew well to board after I had boarded, to make sure I had not
been detained. The Stasi tried, and when I told them I would be
the third last to board, my passport was thrown at me, hitting the
floor, and sliding onto the air bridge. In 1992 I returned to West
Berlin, and met on of my East German friends who had spent
time in Hohenschoenhausen prison before an amnesty, and being
thrown out of the DDR. He told me that his Stasi interrogators
had told him that I was to be "Gekidnapped" . This would have
likely happened on leaving via Checkpoint Charlie. (had I kept
my original booking TXL/MAN). I have great trust in AY, and having
used them on many flights from HEL to LED and MOS, I knew
the Finnish staff in LED and MOS, they allowed me to use their
photocopier (they were banned in the USSR} and read Western
press, which was also banned. I therefore knew they would help
me in Berlin, rewriting by BA tkt.
Lance Shippey