Who knew that the Stasi could be fun?

Two Jokes:

Three groups went out hunting together to see who was the best: The East German Police, the East German Military, and the Stasi. After a short while, the Police and the Military groups both manage to bag a couple of deer each, but the Stasi men are nowhere to be found. They search around for a little while, until they find a clearing. The Stasi men are surrounding a poor defenseless rabbit, and are taking turns beating it up. One of them yells at the rabbit "Are you ready to admit that you are a boar now?!"

George Bush Sr., Mikhail Gorbachov, and Erich Honecker are running away from a mob of cannibals, but are losing ground quickly. Bush yells to the Cannibals, "I'll pay each of you 10,000 dollars if you go away!" but the cannibals keep on coming. Gorbachov yells, "Stop and embrace the paradise of the communist motherland!" The cannibals don't even slow down. Honecker shouts to their pursuers, "In 50 feet you enter East Germany!" Immediately, the cannibals turn around and run off screaming.

A 17 year old student was sentenced to 6 years in prison for the second joke. I'm sure he didn't think he was anti-Party, but then again, what did his opinion matter to the Stasi?

Today we went on a tour of the Stasi headquarters in Berlin, and Höhenschönhausen (lit. High Beautiful House), the Stasi prison in Berlin. The headquarters tour was nothing too special. It was interesting to see the original furniture and conference rooms, but it was still just another soviet style office complex. The most interesting exhibit was the surveillance equipment. They were fairly inventive in their spying, with cameras and mikes concealed in objects ranging from the humble fake rock to the noble purse to the fabled 'conspiratorial bra' to the ingenious car door camera (utilizing infrared light). Not too many pictures from there, appropriately.

Höhenschönhausen, on the other hand, was fascinating. Our guide was soft spoken, and although he was not an inmate himself (there are guides there that were), he made masterful parallels between current US, Nazi, and Stasi policies, really bringing the information into a new light. He also showed us how the prison worked on a fairly detailed level - A prisoner only saw two people, the guard and the interrogator, and only spoke to one (guess who?). He used real stories of inmates, allowing us to really understand the isolation that they felt, and, in my favorite part, he showed us exaclt how the basic interrogation was orchestrated. It's a standard good cop/bad cop deal, except that they already know all of your personal information, so by the time you break down (and the likely reason for it), they know exactly how you think.

Did you know that about 2 percent of East Germans were affiliated with the Stasi at at least a basic level (informant)? That's insane. I can't imagine what it must have been like to live with that sort of constant surveillance (and everybody must have know about it), but the prison tour today was certainly a good start. Thank you nameless German man (who teaches/has taught at the main FU campus. Thank you. Especially for pointing out that fact that the prison now has signs of little green men running to freedom wherever there's an exit. Irony rules.

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In other news, I went to the gym yesterday, and I'm glad that I did. I'll make it a point to go 2 or so times a week. Mcfit's a decent establishment, for sure. For tomorrow I was considering taking a bike and heading into the Grunewald, which is a forest/park in Berlin, that also happens to be 10 minutes from my home here. I hear that there are wild boar roaming about in there!

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In other other news, I've made up my mind about where I'm going for my break. Brussels and Amsterdam, each for 2 or 3 days. Apparently, one of my host parent's son's (from the husband's last marriage) lives in Brussels now, so I can meet him when I get there. He's apparently a big environmentalist. Tickets and such will be booked this weekend.

Midterms are still in the way of the break, though, so I'm not off the hook yet.

Pictures from today! (and they're all in one album, too!)