Word: checkpoints
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...just about as gay as they were in the good old days. Bulgaria is plugging a two-week stay on the sunny Black Sea coast for $91, including air fare from Vienna. Another popular Vienna excursion: down the Danube by hydrofoil for a weekend in Budapest. In Berlin, Checkpoint Charlie has become a bustling portal for tourists who want a peek behind the Wall. But of the major writers, only the Hungarian-born Fodor seems to be aware that the Iron Curtain exists; Fielding dropped all his Eastern European sections...
...escape plan was simple but to the point-Heinrich-Heine-Strasse Checkpoint, that is. Winfried Zippel, 20, an East Berlin mason and truck driver by profession, would steal a construction truck. Then he and his pal, Heinz Trochim, 21, a machinist, would crash the Wall to freedom. It being a warm summer night, the cocky pair tanked up on beer before setting out. The celebration was premature: before they had driven a single block, a pair of East German S.S.D. (State Security) cars squealed to a halt in front of them, and a clutch of cops jumped out. Beery protestations...
...years ago, three East Berlin students donned homemade Russian uniforms, doctored a car to look like a Soviet military sedan and calmly drove through a checkpoint in the Communist Wall, unchallenged by the border guards. The story of the ingenious escape obviously got around, for last week West Berliners were chuckling over a similar stunt pulled off a fortnight ago with the help of American uniforms...
...broke out a bundle of stolen U.S. army gear. Within minutes, the two men were dressed as a couple of casual G.I.s, and the girl was hidden in the trunk. Finally, Karl-Heinz replaced the car's West Berlin license tags with U.S. military plates, and headed for Checkpoint Charlie, where uniformed Western servicemen can drive in and out without Communist inspection. It worked like a charm. As the car was waved through to West Berlin, neither the passengers nor the East German Grepo noticed Karl-Heinz' only technical error: the sergeant's stripes on his sleeves...
Less successful was the car that on Christmas night swerved out of a line of vehicles at another checkpoint, tried to crash the barrier pole. Communist guards, their marksmanship enhanced by the lights on a 20-ft.-high Christmas tree they had cynically erected near the Wall, opened fire. Horst Schöneberger, 24, of Dortmund, West Germany, was wounded and hauled away with two East German girls in the car (the Reds sentenced him to twelve years at hard labor). The driver, Horst's brother Heinz, 27, sprinted for the boundary 15 feet away. Just...