Double-Half
or One Ten without ham

.. hopefully, if I´m not too dumb.

I´ll walk there soon again, in a couple of hours, to get two monitors home.

This is for Sami´s COLOURFULWORLD Monday Murals.

 This was in Italy, I can´t remember the name of the place, we were traveling for two weeks with a group from lower Saxony (and we´re back to last post, people from East Germany!)

And what did we get?

The trains are always late? DB (German Bahn) is the place to complain to, I was told 😉

In April 1962 three West-Berlin students decided to help, to build an escape-tunnel from the East to the West of Germany.
They were sick of watch-towers, armed men, traps, cleared zones, forbidden zones, death zones... all that dividing families...

 

The decision was fool-hearty, but! Hey!
Those (two Italian, one German) guys were clever and went into public, like tourists...

... to find the best spot/route.

 

They saw, but ever even waved at each other, East and West.

In the East they stood in line for Russian meat and potatoes, another line at the post-office, for food and clothing from relatives from the West, a life without grace.

They had to be quiet, doing the work. they were so close to "life" you could hear the difference between a man´s and a woman´s footstep 15 feet above!

20 tons of wood for support they silently moved in there!

 

And what for?! Primary for their friend, Peter Schmidt, who... was half-Spanish!
He told them "we have no future here".

 

The tunnel was so long the air grew bad, so they needed to provide that, too!
We´re still talking students here.

WHY, why for heaven´s sake did we at school learn but the little Austrian man who started WW II but not about these people??????

 

If Peter May was still a teacher I´d ask him to show this to his students, not Rock music in the language lab!
He was cool, he never followed the stupid school-books :-)
Best teacher I ever had!

They... we´re back at the theme that haunts me... worked their Popos off!

And showing what students can do would be the best way, right???

Whilst they dug more than 40 people´d died trying to escape "up there".
Like... jumping from 4th floor. Not into freedom, but death. How desperate these people were, loosing their freedom!

"To the first day of your death - your Daughter and Grandchildren"

And we take it all for granted.

Olga Segler was 81 years of age and shared the fate.

It was a cold, rainy summer, the worst since years.
Water came into the tunnels, oh why would anything be easy? They silently used a hand-pump, 8000 gallons in a week and the water kept coming.
3 weeks of only pumping, mud, mud and mud, wet., muddy clothes. And they were not to be seen in public like that, revealing what they´re doing!

 

They needed an extra, hidden entrance in West Berlin.

"Der Kleine" was a student from electrical engineering, just like Ingo btw - and he made a lot of improvements (just saying). And after the flood he was back at digging.
Nothing to do at work you´ll find Ingo cleaning the place, broom in hand.

And where put all the earth they dug out? They kept it in the cellar, in more than 4 rooms.

And to add to the complications one was caught and they had to find another route for the tunnel.

But they got going, getting out dirt, bringing in electricity. And got a second, bigger flood. 

They helped anyone whose freedom has been stolen.

Friday, September 14th, 6 pm they were to make the break-through in East Berlin.

It took 12 minutes, 8 for the younger ones to pass the tunnel.
It was a risk, you never knew if you could trust or end up in a camp or prison, yet they took the risk, the planning, the hard work, organized and HELPED.

 

Sadly the tunnel flooded and had to be given up for good.
59 people came through, another 31 on Sunday, with water already in.

The Berlin wall was 13 months old and in this period of time a remarkable 1000 people escaped, despite the danger of death,... or prison.

21 gave half a year of their lives to help - the speaker assumed there would be more tunnels in the future, but people found other ways.

Via boats, planes, balloons. You can try to take away freedom. Some give up, some find ways, some die on their way.

 

And what do we have now? Kids who skip school on Fridays to "Fight for the future", wow, they sure change the whole world by littering the streets, and I do mean that - they have "coffees to go" and just drop it while walking and jumping on, when empty.
Dear Corinna stopped them and despite schools are open again you never hear of them, or is it just me?

OK. Let´s leave on a funny note.
This IS Germany.
 

 

Why are (some) people like this.