Hi!
I'm Francesca 
and I'm Eleonora
and we're LeBerline!!!!
Hi, how are you guys doing?
We hope you're all well and having a great vacation.
Surely you have recognized where we are now:
we are in front of the Brandenburg Gate,
one of the most famous symbols of Berlin
and one of the most famous icons that are linked to the Berlin Wall period and its history,
this great wall that divided the city in 2 for 28 years.
There are many events related to the wall
and, even if you've surely already heard about it,
we want to give you a small summary of the main events,
so that you can get into the mood for a moment
and understand the historical context.
But first, our opening theme!
It's the end of World War II.
Germany is defeated, the victors divide up the territories.
Berlin itself, the capital, is dismembered and divided between Soviets on the one hand
and Americans, English and French on the other.
The result: West Berlin, home of the Wessi,
was a capitalist oasis in the middle of Soviet Germany.
the DDR (or GDR), East Berlin, home of the Ossi, was the Soviet part, economically poorer.
Many citizens of the DDR were trying to emigrate to the West.
This obviously wasn't right for the DDR,
which decided to install a barbed wire that divided the city of Berlin in two,
which then became a brick wall.
As escape attempts did not diminish, on the contrary,
the wall then became a double row of reinforced concrete walls, about 4 meters high,
between which stood the so-called "death strip".
This did not stop the escape attempts, although most of them did not end well...
The first signs of openness came when the border between Austria and Hungary was demolished in May 1989.
A series of demonstrations led, on 9 November,
to the lifting of the ban on reaching the western part of the city
thanks to Gorbachev.
On the same day, thousands of people crossed the checkpoint without being stopped.
After 28 years,
friends and family who had been forcibly divided could finally meet again.
So these were briefly the main events related to the history of the Berlin Wall.
But there are some small curiosities and events that not everyone knows about,
which we would like to talk about in this video.
We have already made a promo video on this topic,
and we suggest you to go and see it,
it’s a very enigmatic one, deliberately unexplained,
full of random scenes that we would like to explain with this video.
In fact, this video goes back to the one Ele was talking about,
retracing a bit his steps, trying to reconnect to it
by giving an explanation to some scenes that were perhaps unclear.
Also because if you go to see that promo video
after you've seen this video,
you'll say "Ah, that's why!
They're not crazy to go smashing doughnuts in the face of American presidents."
Some scenes were also quite simple and intuitive,
such as that of the division of Germany, the initial scene,
and the final scene that is linked to it,
in which Germany is reunited.
Or the scene where we lift a black cloth in the center of Alexanderplatz
to symbolize the erection of the Wall,
with all the passers-by looking at us weird and confused.
Instead there are other scenes that were a little more difficult.
For example, I'm referring to the one in the breaking news,
where we had to give our voice to make this news.
"On the night of August 12-13, '61,
the police began closing down..."
What news am I talking about?
About the erection of the Berlin Wall,
which, if you don't know, was the result of a big lie.
That is, on the night between August 12th and 13th 1961,
they went a little vague and erected this wall,
which was not initially built as you can see now,
but was only barbed wire.
To make this video we did some research,
we watched documentaries and read books
and what made us curious and perplexed us a bit
is the news that if people had protested against the erection of this Wall
things could have gone very differently.
But between the disappointment for the historical events,
with the total embrace of socialist ideology
and people who " well, who cares",
in short they did not demonstrate.
And let's make it short, very short:
who had to speak did not speak,
who should not have done has done,
and this has caused 28 years of segregation
and division of the city.
Reconnecting with what you were saying,
with the fact that the Wall was built at night in secret,
the DDR secretary Walter Ulbricht himself
lied shamelessly to the Western press saying
"Nobody here wants or intends to build a Wall".
Wall Who??
"No one is going to build a Wall."
"Wall? What Wall?"
So we call it the Berlin Wall to simplify it,
but in reality the real name given to it by the DDR is
"Antifaschistischer Schutzwall",
which would be an anti-fascist protective barrier,
as if beyond the barrier, in the West, there was still the fascist threat.
But in reality, on the West side, there was a figure, Konrad Adenauer,
who fought strenuously against the Nazis,
so this definition has nothing to do with it.
Moreover, it is precisely from the eastern part
that the greatest followers of the extreme right,
such as Alternativ für Deutschland, spring up.
Another scene we want to explain
is the one where Mr. President has got a big doughnut on his face.
"I'm a Berliner"
"I'm a Berliner"
Why?
We don't want to go into too much detail about the explanation,
because we've already explained a lot in Kreuzberg's gastronomic video,
go and see it!
When Kennedy comes to Berlin in '63,
2 years after the erection of the Wall,
he makes a speech and says his famous sentence:
"ich bin ein Berliner".
The misunderstandings arise precisely from this allegory,
that is Berliner in the sense of a doughnut
and Berliner in the sense of one who lives in Berlin.
We want to connect to this Kennedy speech,
why was it so important?
Because he made it known to the whole world
that Berlin was ceasing to be a free city.
The Berlin Wall divided not only the city in two
but also the transport system.
In fact there were two U-Bahn lines, the underground,
and one S-Bahn, the railway line,
which had ghost stations.
Basically these ghost stations were border stations
east of the Wall
that were closed at that time because people used them to escape.
So they were closed
and there were armed guards watching them.
Trains going from the west and going east through these stations
only slowed down but didn't stop here.
Here we are at one of these ghost stations,
the Anhalter Bahnhof, near Checkpoint Charlie.
Ah there's also another anecdote about the S-Bahn,
the elevated subway.
At the time of the two Berlin,
the company that operated the S-Bahn urban railway
was based in the eastern part of the city
and therefore ended up under the control of the DDR.
Those who boarded the S-Bahn wagons on the West Berlin section of the S-Bahn
therefore found themselves on trains owned by East Berlin,
with West Berlin on-board staff who wore East Berlin uniforms
and were paid from East Berlin with West German marks,
the result of tickets purchased in the West
but which filled the coffers of an East Berlin company.
" Which my father bought at the market" (famous Italian song)
So let's see how this Wall
marked both a geographical and political boundary (and so on)
but also gave birth to two completely different cities,
even in what they ate,
in the fashion they had.
With this topic we want to do that,
that is, let you know their habits,
what they drank, what they ate.
For example, do you know the story of Nudossi and Nutella?
Basically, Nutella is the chocolate we all know about.
I hope so!
What a sad life if you don't!
It's the chocolate from the West Side.
But what happened?
Since the inhabitants of the DDR, East Berlin,
found themselves in great secrecy in the cellars,
really in great secrecy or else they risked a great deal,
with antennas and so on
they were able to pick up the channels and signals
of the television and radio of West Berlin,
and therefore to hear the advertisements of Nutella.
And what happened,
they had a great desire for Nutella
but they couldn't
the DDR couldn't offer a product of Capitalism and evil,
so they invented their own chocolate,
the Nudossi which is very good,
you have to try it, I have tried it.
Long live Nudossi!
The same thing was for Coke, the classic drink we all know.
The DDR also created a copycat there with the...
Vita Cola!
We're having our nice cappuccino...
Have you seen Berlin Cafe?
How nice, it's good too, huh?
Yes, it is.
Just imagine from one day to the next
that you can no longer go to your café to sip coffee with friends and so on.
This was also very important in the DDR era for the Germans.
Just think that it happened that from one day to the next
they no longer had this product available,
and so they started to invest in Vietnam where plantations were created.
It's raining here...
Noooo...
So the deal was this:
they invested their money in cultivation in Vietnam
and after the cultivation would bear its fruit
Vietnam would supply half of the harvest to the DDR for another 20 years.
But that's what happened:
nevertheless, the cultivation and production times are quite long,
so while the cultivation has paid off,
years have passed and in the meantime Germany had reunified,
and there was no need to go all the way to Vietnam to make coffee,
just go down to the café under the street,
go to the supermarket and they had it, so...
But thanks to this...
Then Vietnam became the largest coffee producer in the world after Brazil,
but the DDR Germans didn't take advantage of it,
that's the funny thing.
Thank you DDR!
in the promo video, which we remind you to check out right now,
you can see me driving a car
and a simpleton wessi that crosses my path
Well, I was actually driving,
it's not a retouched scene,
I was driving a Trabant, a car that's a symbol of the DDR.
So here it is, we are now sitting in front of the Trabant,
friendly called the Trabi .
Trabant means "satellite"
and it has been used just this name to remember the space adventure
involving the Soviet Union.
* Sputnik 1: the first artificial satellite sent into orbit around the Earth
We're at Checkpoint Charlie,
which many of you may have recognized.
this place was the protagonist of a rather bizarre event
and a bit dramatic at the same time
The music at that time during the Wall played a very important role anyway
In the East, rock n roll could only be heard on the radios of the West,
and this once played a nasty trick on the people of the DDR.
In '69 a radio speaker announced that
there would be a Rolling Stones concert  right here at Checkpoint Charlie
on the roof of one of the buildings near the border
so that it would be visible and audible on the other side of the Wall
i.e. to the East.
And this obviously caught the attention of a lot of people
who immediately believed it
even after the speaker announced that it was really just a joke.
But nobody paid any attention to it,
in fact thousands of people came here to this very place
to attend this ghost concert of the Rolling Stones.
And that caused a series of riots.
Always talking about the Rolling Stones
do you remember the scene in our promo video
where I have a balloon in my hand on one side of the wall
and on the other side there is Ele sad looking up?
Well, that's to refer us back to a real Rolling Stones concert
which this time was really done in '82
then 13 years after that ghost concert,
where at the end of the concert hundreds of coloured balloons were thrown in the air.
This caught the attention of a certain Carlo Karges,
who is a member of a music band called Nena.
This event inspired the lyrics to the song "99 Luftballons"
[singing]
We can't do more than that, though.
That's right or they'll remove our video.
which means "99 balloons" translated literally
and has become one of the most famous hits of German music.
The lyrics to this song are very interesting
but we don't want to take too long now,
we'll talk about it in another dedicated video.
These were just a few of the many curiosities related to the Berlin Wall
But we couldn't treat them all
otherwise the video would have gotten really long.
Even on each of the topics covered
there would be much more to say than what we said,
but the most interesting topics then we will cover them
in other videos dedicated only to those
So we sincerely hope that we have told you things you did not know,
that we have aroused your curiosity.
Write us in the comments what you already knew,
what you did not know
and what you would like to know about this historical period.
We will then make more videos on this topic
and one way to always know when our videos come out
is to activate the bell and subscribe to the channel.
So even leaving a like, a comment, subscribing to our channel
are all ways that help us to make new videos
and help a lot our channel.
So already now we say thank you for this.
We send you a big kiss and
a big bye from LeBerline!!!!
...and with random scenes...
...and with random scenes...
[cursing]
Do you want to do it?
[laughing out loud]
SOO...
...that began to produce cultivations...
[bicycle bell ringing]
[cursing]
...and with scenes...
[cursing]
...you can stay tuned
[laughing out loud]
Stay tuned...
