On a further visit to the incredible city of Berlin it was time to focus more time on the old east side.

Visiting the DDR museum gives a general picture of daily life under a dictatorship, particularly shortages of what we in the west saw as basics of good old consumerism.

Then there were the ‘incentives’ of such things as artificially cheap housing. But nothing came without at least a subliminal message of menace.

But it’s the Stasi Museum that truly brings home that chilling effect of the ‘Aparatus of the State‘.

Who’d have known that a job with the Government came with essential perks such as snitching on your neighbours, listening in on phone calls, bugging apartments. Even breaking in to apartments just to move items of furniture around… well, how else is paranoia going to foment.

Special departments were even set up to check on the loyalties of fellow employees.

In the end certain freedoms became too much to resist and contain. The greatest emblem of the aparatus… the Berlin Wall also needed to come down. Though fortunately, a lengthy strip remains as the East Side Gallery… the largest outdoor art gallery in the world.

Until we speak again, the Wall conveys many important messages that we’ll do well to remember… particularly in the deranged times of Trump trampling over basic civil liberties at home and across the world.