Quote:
Originally Posted by Skybird
You never experienced "Transitverkehr" between West Germany and West Berlin, with VoPos (Volks-Polizisten, "people's policemen")having dogs and machine guns on the ready, holding 500 m long lines of cars in 6-12 parallel lines for 1-2 hours and the controler in his box often treating you like sh!t and talking like the mean Germans in Hollywood movies do.
To be fair, some of these guys just did their job correctly and within the limits of neutrality tried to be kind. They probably violated orders when behaving like that. But some others really used the opportunity and showed who was in control - these dwarfs fulfilled every clichée about the pedantic evil little German there is.
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All that sounds very foriegn to me. But coming from a country where armed soldiers were not common place among the civilian population, much less as greeters, you can imagine my suprise, as a 23 y.o.
Looking back now I'm sure they were just doing their job, and were probably being watched closely by people who were not overtly dangerous to us, but were to the guys in the jetway.