All interesting stuff. I had been to both sides of Berlin a couple of times and like many was fascinated by the TV news reports coming, and nearly went to see it all happen for myself. I actually found return availability on the Dan-Air schedule from Gatwick to Tegel but was defeated by not finding hotel accommodation, phoned where I had been before but they were full, it looked a bit chaotic to turn up on spec.
There were a range of travel nuances. Allies (ie UK/USA/France) could quite readily get into East Berlin, but not beyond into the DDR. Schonefeld was actually just beyond the East Berlin boundary, in GDR proper, so all the panoply of crossing the line applied, though there was a certain acceptance if holding air tickets it seemed. There was also a GDR special coach to Schonefeld that left quite regularly from Zoo station, in West Berlin and which I suspect did not need visas, I photographed it a couple of times, which drove directly to the airport, air tickets seemed checked on boarding and doubtless were all checked again at the border. Whenever I went to East Berlin I found it mostly normal, not a third-world experience at all as invented by writers who never went there. I always spent my compulsory-converted DM 25 per day and then some, principally in pleasant restaurants and bars, where most were locals. They were quite used to Allied visitors with halting O-level German.
At the wall collapse moment there were all sorts of impromptu arrangements, plenty of film of Trabants (not the only GDR cars, there were Wartburgs and even Skodas) being driven over, the U-Bahn in West Berlin took much of the load and was overwhelmed at times. Announced that those with GDR passports did not need to have tickets but in practice it was totally free access and no tickets were being checked at all. Absence of maps was an issue apparently for a couple of days until the East Berlin main daily newspapers actually printed them in their morning editions. All the ticket checking and information staff were on crowd control, and I read the information booths, equally under pressure, were manned by the railway enthusiast groups.
Pre-reunification the non-Allied Western flights to Schonefeld were low frequency, just a few times a week, for example Finnair to Helsinki was just a DC9 twice a week, one via Warsaw; KLM was the same frequency on a small F28 to Amsterdam. Aside from the Eastern Bloc there were a few third world operators as well. Just in passing, the last Caravelle I ever saw airborne was by chance some months after reunification, a Syrian Arab Airlines one operating Copenhagen-Berlin-Athens-Damascus once a week, descending into Schonefeld one Saturday afternoon. Non-Allied operators were not allowed to use the corridors, and nobody could cross the GDR/West German border separately, so had to route up over the Baltic or down over Czechoslovakia, for example a bizarre Tarom One-Eleven operated weekly Bucharest-Berlin-Luxembourg-Lisbon.
Yes, I have my quite chunky piece(s) of Berlin Wall as well, picked from the rubble where it had been broken through.
Last edited by WHBM; 15th Dec 2020 at 00:22.