Journey's End Michael Palin's New Europe

I'm in Slovakia. It's a bit of a shock after the flat lands of Poland

to find yourself confronted with an 8,000 foot mountain range in the heart of Europe,

but these are the High Tatras, part of the Carpathian range,

and I've got to cross them to be in the last stage of my journey

through Slovakia, the Czech Republic and into East Germany.

Once through Slovakia and across the Czech Republic,

I'll be following the River Elbe through eastern Germany,

from Dresden to Berlin,

then on to journey's end at Rugen Island on the Baltic coast.

Slovakia is one of Europe's newest countries,

splitting from Czechoslovakia by mutual agreement just 14 years ago.

It was always considered the underachiever of the Czechoslovak partnership,

with a slower, more rural way of life.

In the mountain villages, little seems to have changed.

Today the people who live here have killed a pig.

Elena, a Slovak married to a Welshman, lives nearby.

What are they gonna do now?

-Are they going to...

-I think they're going to...

Obviously they need to clean it now.

I think they boil the water, you see they're preparing the water outside.

Yeah, yeah.

You can help cleaning!

Alphonse is saying you perhaps want to take your coat off!

I don't want to do it at all, but I'll do it!

LAUGHTER

-They're asking are you married?

-Yeah, yeah. Married.

So don't do it like with the woman,

you've got to go really for it!

Go for it! That's right!

I'm a city boy!

I'm not used to all this!

For young Slovakians, a day like this could soon be a thing of the past.

And scenes like this confined to EU approved premises.

That's great!

Oh sorry! Oh dear!

'Oh, dear indeed!

'Next time, the ladies take safe sausage precautions!'

I don't know the Slovakian for stop!

'None of the pig will be wasted.

'What isn't eaten today will be stored away for the winter.'

This is all parts of the pig, isn't it?

After work, I ask Elena about Slovakia.

Did you feel that Slovakia had to be its own nation in order to sort of realise what it wanted?

Probably, yes, yeah, because through the history, through the centuries,

we always had Hungary and the Austrian monarchy over us

and we never could say what we wanted or do what we wanted

and we did what they told us and so it's a good time.

We are learning to stand on our own, I think.

It's funny really, isn't it?

This whole process seems to be in Europe going on

of interconnections through the European Union,

through transport and all that sort of thing.

At the same time, more and more small nations springing up

who feel they can only realise what that nation wants by being independent.

DRUNKEN SINGING

'At a time like this, the old songs are always the best...

'..even if no-one can remember them!'

# Oom-pa, oom-pa, ya-ya-ya... #

You're making that up!

You're making that up!

-Even I know that!

-We've caught him!

SINGING CONTINUES

I'm almost tempted to say it's been a pig of a day, but I won't!

Well, it's time to leave the snows of the High Tatras behind

and back onto the plain and west to my penultimate country...

the Czech Republic.

Being in the European Union has helped the Slovaks emerge from the Czech shadow

and tourism in the Tatras is one of the big hopes in an increasingly optimistic future.

I've crossed my 19th border into Brno,

the second city of the Czech Republic.

Brno is a solid, manufacturing town with a few surprises off the main drag.

In this unglamorous little theatre,

the Czech tradition of satirical mime is carried on

by one of its most illustrious practitioners, Ctibor Turba.

Could you be so kind,

try to play in the time,

try to express, as big as possible,

palette of different expressions of red colour.

Martina, asked to mime the colour red,

seems to set herself almost literally on fire!

OK. Fine. Yeah.

Michael, may I ask you,

could you be so kind and could you make a study of "le coq"?

Oh God!

Could you use this mask?

This Capitano, no?

If there is some correspondence

between the character of the cock and the character of Capitano.

Let's try.

And don't forget now, this mask, more moments, longer.

Don't forget to stop

to make so-called representative positions.

'I model my performance on everything I wanted to be when I was young, but never dared.'

'They love it!'

Now that you're free, nobody's oppressing you, is that sense of humour still...

is it still satirical? Is it still having a go at establishment?

Stupid... but not this. This element of this thing can easily change,

but in details, there are still so many problems

and we can be on occasions menacing so I know people

which go on this excellent humour which makes some sort of cleaning.

It's like kidneys or...

Yes, I know, kidneys...

Kidneys which clean your blood!

I feel people like Turba are happier with something to fight against,

In the new Europe, we're all theoretically free and of course encouraged to keep moving.

A smooth, tilting train that's come from Vienna carries me northwards

and pilsner lager, one of the Czechs' finest contributions to the world, helps the journey slip by.

Nestling in the western mountains of the Czech Republic is a town where all excess can be cured,

in excessively plush surroundings.

Karlovy Vary, once the German town of Carlsbad,

sits on a bed of healing waters

and there are people who tell you how best to make use of them.

Milada, who runs this clinic, has treated such icons of new Europe as Gorbachev

and Czech President, Vaclav Havel,

so she's a force to be reckoned with.

I prescribe you now how you drunk the water, and to this, you make two or three treatments every day, OK?

Right. This water which is very, very special.

Our water. We drink the water from these cups.

We drink the water every time on empty stomach because you will see...

We wash mechanically all digestive system.

Treating it special! I think so, yes, yes!

Because when the people have constipation, they must drink water at 30 degrees Celsius?

My body just doesn't know what it's got to look forward to!

And how long is this programme?

-You drink the water around 10 minutes...

-How many days?

-The best is 20 days.

-20 days.

Because every day we drink around 5 cups.

It is 1 litre, and when you really drink 20 litres,

your liver can regenerate.

-You deal with the heart, as well as the body?

-Uh-huh!

The line down the body?

Yeah. Complex. Our body, our mind and our soul.

When everything is healthy and happy, it means we can speak about the...

Can you tell from somebody quite quickly whether they're happy or unhappy, or likely to be depressed?

I think love is very important in life

because everybody who is in love, they are happy and they are much nicer!

-Laugh?

-Love is very good.

But also love is very painful for some people!

They have very unhappy... affairs?

I think you've found... The second...

the woman found the good man and it is really this very good love

which means they must be happy because life is...

Good sex, really!

Sex is very important because of all the hormones situated in the body,

it's very important and I think that people don't make enough love and sex now

because they don't have time for this now. It needs time, too.

Time is very important.

Can you give me a prescription?

'So star-studded is Milada's clientele that I find myself

'in a bagful of ice-cold CO2, next to the current Miss World!'

-Hello!

-Hello!

You're obviously radiant! I think white is definitely your colour!

'Tatiana Kucharova is the first Czech girl ever to win the title.'

It's like your body is bursting.

It feels like the wind in the willies!

'The carbon dioxide wind treatment is intended to dilate the capillaries,

'causing the skin to radiate a smooth, therapeutic glow.'

Are you feeling any better for this? Are your...

I think it will come later!

Your skin is sort of opening up and...

I'm glad something's happening!

It's a bit like going to the dry cleaners!

-Have you ever been in a bag, a plastic bag, before?

-No, no, never!

This is the first time!

Me too! And I'm older than you!

How have I missed out on this all my life?

Anyway, sleep, we have to sleep, so here we go.

It's an odd feeling, isn't it?

I think you need really to have someone to tell you that this is good for you,

otherwise it's like sitting in a warm, wet bath with a lot of gravel up your backside!

It's quite dirty!

It is quite dirty!

So have you been to Karlovy Vary many times?

Yeah. I've been here many times, but this is the first time here in the spa centre.

The success of the private clinics may make Karlovy Vary glow with health,

but the town's most valuable resource is free.

Every day, the place is full of people taking nature's medicine.

You have to drink it fresh!

Fresh, yeah, yeah, fresh...

And here it comes up from the earth.

OK.

Well... Mmm!

The clinics may be all futuristic hi-tech, but on the street,

there's traditional porcelain mugs and elegant old colonnades.

Here's another one, and I've heard they get hotter?

-Is that right, as you go along?

-Yes, it is.

-And, oh...

-62.

62 it says, yes.

It's quite hot, isn't it?

-Yes, it is!

-Well, here we go!

Now I actually prefer it that way!

-Yeah? You like it better?

-Yeah.

I like it better than the lukewarm.

This is like a sort of really hot cuppa.

So we're not the only... We're not the first ones in history?

No we're not! A lot of famous people drink this water.

For example, Goethe, Beethoven, Karl Marx and a lot of others.

And now Miss World!

Yeah! Maybe I'm the first one!

Karlovy Vary fosters the impression that time has stood still,

an illusion reinforced tonight at the Hotel Pupp with an aristocrats ball.

New Europe seems a world away,

as those from rich and well-connected families greet each other like old friends.

But there are occasional impostors!

-Enjoy your evening!

-Thanks.

-Pleasure to meet you.

You're too kind.

Thank you.

Hello, hello! We've come all the way from London to see this.

-Mr World!

-I'm Mr World? I'll think about that, actually!

That's very good, yes. Maybe you are if you're with Miss World. Thank you, thank you very much.

Good evening. Thanks. Mr and Mrs World!

That's rather good, that.

It's a spectacular room,

but I think Tatiana and I have made the mistake of sitting down too soon!

It's an amazing place!

It's a different kind of world.

Yeah, a different kind of world.

-Totally different!

-Yeah. Me too.

We're not aristocrats!

No, we are not!

It's interesting to observe though, isn't it?

Don't you like to look at it?

This is a world I don't really know much about, see how they're...

'Suddenly, an aristocrat spots me.'

Hello, Mr Palin! How are you?

Thank you, thank you!

I was admiring your spectacular medal...and this is Tatiana.

Nice to meet you!

-Nice to meet you.

-What is this?

It's the Sicilian Order of the Knights of the Collar of St Agatha, yeah!

The Sicilian Order of the Knights of the...?

The Knights of the Collar of St Agatha, yeah? You have...

From the 11th century, you had three royal houses in Italy.

You had the House of Aragon, you had the House of Savoy and Bourbon.

The Bourbon is the...

'My great grandmother was an Irish orphan but I don't think I want to bring that one up!'

..the House of Aragon is sort of the Collar of St Agatha's.

If you go to Catania...

-Yes, Catania. I...

-You can always...

In Sicily, yeah.

In February, we always have the Feast of St Agatha,

so that's the main event for us.

The period flavour of the Aristocrats Ball is so immaculately recreated

that one can almost forget that two world wars ever happened!

I mean these people's families organised the Crusades!

Prague, an hour's drive from Karlovy Vary,

was spared the devastation the Second World War inflicted on so many European capitals.

It's splendidly rich in history, but doesn't take itself too seriously.

Prague's architecture is a bit of everything,

from the Gothic houses by the cathedral on the hill

to the majestic and neo-classical bulk of the Rudolfinum Concert Hall.

The 600-year-old Charles Bridge is packed 20 hours a day,

as people squeeze down the tourist trail they call "The Golden Mile".

But there is a quieter way to see the city.

For the price of a pedalo, I get a view not just of Prague,

but of the Czech Republic from local girl, Bara Vatsalikova.

Do they regard any of the nations and the countries around as their natural allies?

Is there one sort of people that the Czechs tend to like more than others,

or understand better than others?

I think we get along with the Slovaks the most of course because of the link,

but we also think that the Slovakian girls come to the Czech Republic to steal our good-looking boys,

and in general, I think we don't much like Germans,

because of all the oppressions and all the wars,

and it's been like thousands of years of our fights with Germans,

and we think they're a little too strict

and not any flexible and no fun at all!

'I daren't ask about the British!

'Our stag parties love Prague!'

What's essentially Czech, do you think?

I think it's the humour.

I think it's the dark humour.

We're very ironic and sarcastic and we like it about ourselves.

We...

We like to make fun of everything and take everything lighter than like...

from the lighter perspective.

-Are you very sociable?

-Well, I am!

I am and definitely, I think so.

I think Czechs are very social.

You can see people hanging out together all the time.

It's very based on friendship and community and branches of people that gather together.

It's not only that you one friend but basically people

usually have at least like a group of 10 friends that they hang out with.

Bara's friends are based around a singing group to which she belongs called The Yellow Sisters.

Tonight they and their band will be playing at a riverside castle at Usti. I tag along.

As the industrial sprawl of Northern Bohemia slips by,

the Yellow Sisters discuss the show.

All of them have studied in West Africa, and their music reflects a strong African influence.

HE PLAYS

SHE SINGS

This seems very Czech!

I can't imagine an English band being allowed to do this sort of thing in the restaurant car!

THEY SING HARMONIES

When the castle at Usti finally comes in sight, I feel I know the concert pretty well,

and privileged to have had my ringside seat in the restaurant car, I head back to Prague.

The thousands of graves huddled together in the city's Jewish Cemetery

reflect the size and strength of the old Jewish community in Prague,

but for people like Lisa Mikova, life changed catastrophically when the Nazis marched in, in 1939.

She and her family were sent north, to the old garrison town of Terezin.

Under the chilling motto, "Work makes you free"

an overcrowded ghetto was created.

It was here in 1944 that the Nazis made a propaganda film to be called

The Fuhrer Gives The Jews a City.

The forced smiles, the hastily cleaned up areas

help blind the world, including Red Cross inspection teams,

to the realities of the Nazis genocidal policy.

-This was something that happened anyway?

-Yes. This really happened.

That really happened.

-Here are the gardens.

-And here you see the gardens.

There were around...

There were a lot of vegetable fields, and there we had to work.

Of course the vegetables were not for us.

The Germans came every second day with cars to carry the vegetables away

and there were guards and when they saw

that we would eat one tomato or one turnip

it was terrible. You were punished...

The truth of Terezin is that of 144,000 Jews who passed through,

121,000 died, either here, on forced marches or in the concentration camps they were sent to.

I lost my parents here. I saw them for the last time,

but then when I came to Auschwitz and then to the work camp near Dresden to Freibach,

so we remembered Terezin as a spa.

In February 1945, allied bombers carried out a massive raid on Dresden,

wiping out its historic centre and killing an estimated 35,000 people.

We lived so near Dresden that we saw this bombardment,

these two in February. They locked us in the factory

and we saw the planes and I must say today

that we were so happy when we saw the English planes,

yes, and it was of course a possibility

that something could also destroy our factory where we were.

We were locked up, but we didn't think about that

and we were so happy that we didn't think about our deaths in Dresden.

And so and so. We said, "Oh, something, something yes,

"they do something, they will help us. They will free us, yes."

This was our thinking and they gave us so many strengths.

When I say something to a German he looks at me if I am normal,

but it was like that.

Today's Dresden is a symbol of resurrection...

a rebuilt city in a reunited Germany.

62 years ago, this was a burning shell.

Now beside the banks of the Elba, the Saxon capital is reborn.

There are symbols of reconciliation, like the cross made by a British bomber pilot's son.

It sits on top of the rebuilt Frauenkirke,

which had been left as a pile of rubble by the communists of the GDR -

the German Democratic Republic.

High on the dome, I meet Felix Shoga.

Were you born and bred in Dresden?

I was, in 1986.

I'm 21-years old right now.

And the memories of the bombing and that awful bombing in 1945,

was that something you sort of learned about at school?

My grandma told me about it. She saw the bombing from about 20kms away and the sky was burning and...

she still doesn't talk about a lot, but it's a part of our history

and even the German Democratic Republic is a part of our history,

even though I don't know much about it.

I was three when the Berlin Wall fell,

and it's a part of our identity, I guess.

Yes. So most people think it's a good thing?

-It's a good thing, yeah!

-Unite?

Yeah. You see I don't know much about it,

but what my parents tell me is that not everything was wrong in the German Democratic Republic.

I guess it was a larger community.

Everybody was helping each other and yeah, not everything was wrong.

-That's what they always tell me.

-Yeah, yeah, interesting, yeah.

But there is... now they say, some people still have the wall in their heads.

It's a symbol of metaphor and even though now it's 17 years after reunification,

there is still segregation between the Eastern part and the Western part

and it's probably gonna take another generation to get rid of that wall in the heads of people.

We have a last chance to admire the flamboyant skyline of the new Old Dresden

as we slide away down the Elba, on Europe's oldest steamboat service.

It's a mixture of hi-tech and low-tech.

In almost anywhere else but Germany, machinery like this would have been in a museum,

but here it is, paddling us through the Saxon countryside.

HORN BLOWS

On this rather pleasant peregrination we've paddled our way down to the town of Meissen,

world famous of course for only one thing...china!

Meissen hardly resembles the cliched East Germany city...

it's pretty, unspoilt and its success is based on very expensive objects.

A secret formula for making porcelain was discovered here almost 300 years ago.

Collectors have pushed up the prices and some of these camp little figurines go for over £1,000.

I prefer my china a little more down to earth...

..like the bathroom appliances they make in this factory, relocated here from West Germany.

This state-of-the-art operation has provided a big boost for an East Germany economy

only slowly catching up with the wealthier West.

I'm shown round by a lady from head office.

Was it that there was a tradition of porcelain making around Dresden and Meissen? Was that important?

Yes. I mean the region is very famous for people really educated in producing ceramic ware.

They already have the feeling how to produce ceramic ware.

That's important, is it, the feeling? It's not just making any old products?

It is, absolutely, because it's a material that's all nature.

I love the paint-spraying robot!

Like a dentist's chair gone mad!

MACHINERY BEEPS

And the showroom products are now... the finished...

When the job is finished, as we get into terrible puns, a little...

So what's that? That's a sort of... not conventional?

Well, actually I would like to show that first, maybe, if you want to.

Well, that's, that's the sort of one I associate with Germany particularly,

-where there's a sort of flat pan.

-Absolutely, absolutely!

-And so it doesn't drop into the water, your thing?

-Exactly! We call it the "wash-out" model

and it has a very practical reason actually, medical reasons, so as we say,

you can examine your business when you've made a number two, so that's...

Is that the sort of thing Germans do? I mean are you brought up to examine your business as it were?

Yes, you do! Yes, I mean especially elderly people should do that regularly.

They should check on their sanity as well on that point.

-On their sanity?

-Er, yes.

-Sanitary! Their health, yes!

-Yes, sorry... on their health!

Sanity's is sort of mental, yeah, but probably the same!

Well, you've been talking too much about sanitary ware, so I'm coming back on sanity!

-Sanity ware! I like that! That's a very good lavatory!

-And that's why a lot of Germans use it, and...

-Is it still popular then, that particular stuff?

-Yes, it is very popular.

In Germany there are some, also in Switzerland, some in The Netherlands,

but mostly in Germany, people are used to it and they like to do in that way,

-so for those who don't like it in that way, we have mixture where it can take both.

-More regular...

Also, perhaps you can enlighten me.

I've heard that there's a custom now for German men to actually sit down when they're having a pee,

and it's become quite an important almost a sort of political thing...

that's what's men should do, is it?

Yes. I have to laugh about that, because that's a very frequent question.

It is true that a lot of German men have decided to sit when they pee.

They don't like to speak too much about it because they still consider it as not very masculine,

but they do... they do, more and more, yeah!

BELLS TOLL

Satirical cabaret has a long tradition in Germany and during the Communist period,

it was one of the few arenas in which criticism could be voiced, albeit carefully and ingeniously.

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

Gunter Bankur performed throughout the days of the GDR, when they had full houses every night.

Tonight here in Leipzig, the cast and the audience are re-living some of the old sketches

that wowed them in the '60s and '70s, when satire had a real purpose.

THEY SPEAK GERMAN

APPLAUSE

Leipzig, with its big, international trade fairs,

was the city where the GDR met the rest of the world,

and the state security police, known as the Stasi, were a strong presence.

Gunter explains to me the way the Stasi worked, and what they were trying to achieve.

Well, the idea of these people was

as I think the Minister of State Security once said,

"We have to go into every flat, into every bar, into every head.

"We have to know what people think, what people plan, what people do"

and they had lots and lots of information.

I mean they had six million people in their archives.

Did people disappear?

Did you know of someone who suddenly was off the streets and you didn't see them again?

In the '50s there was a saying "If you tell a joke in the restaurant and somebody hears it,

"you will disappear to Siberia",

and when I was a small boy, I always thought,

"What do they mean by 'you will disappear to Siberia?'"

Well, it meant you you will be sent to the Gulag...

..in the '50s, until '61 you could be...

There was the death penalty in East Germany

and you could be shot by the Stasi in Leipzig until '61.

The Runden Ecke, or Round Corner,

was the bland building from the which the Stasi spied on the people of Leipzig.

Now it's a museum and people can spy on the Stasi.

Preserved in all its banal colourlessness,

it feels more like a small town technical college

than a place where thousands of lives were watched, listened to and often destroyed.

It's extraordinary how, you know, the evil of the system emanated from just a little office like this.

You didn't need much...the telephone, the filing system,

an enormous amount of details kept on everybody,

and of course the shredder...vital things!

And then the tea and the coffeemaker and the map,

but enormous numbers of people's lives were disrupted from this room.

It really is an example of the bureaucracy of oppression.

One of those who fought the system and ultimately won,

is Hans Zimmerman, a keen naturalist turned environmental campaigner.

The town of Bitterfeld where he was born and brought up, was the centre of East Germany's chemical industry.

A hundred factories, employing 30,000 workers, poured tons of untreated effluent

into the rivers and onto the land. By the 1980s, Bitterfeld was a toxic dump.

After taking me on a tour of Bitterfeld, as it is today, Hans invites me into his home.

Thank you, thank you!

He wants me to meet Margot Miosga, the journalist who helped him make

a TV expose which brought Bitterfeld's pollution to a world audience.

Hans had already been brought to the attention of the Stasi.

How big were the files? How many?

How fat was the... SHE SPEAKS GERMAN

THEY SPEAK GERMAN

It's just information about Hans and...

TRANSLATION: 3,228 pages!

TRANSLATION: So he kept his files very consciously, without problems.

So what was shocking for him was the result, what the Stasi decided what should have been done with him.

Destroy the marriage.

Make it impossible - that he never gets a job again. Make him a criminal.

And lock him away... So that was how the Stasi worked always.

They had like strategic development.

One thing really was they often did, they destroyed families.

Does Hans feel any nostalgia for the GDR?

TRANSLATION: That was my life! I delivered...

I did want to live it differently in another way, in the right way.

The laws for environmental laws were good in the GDR.

They didn't practice them.

And if they would have done this properly,

a lot of things were easier for me.

I only wanted to be a human being.

Today, bio-fuel crops and wind farms mark the landscape of a new, cleaner Germany.

These wide flatlands on the Polish-German border

are ideal tank country, and during the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact had 7,000 tanks here,

which they reckoned they could get to Marseilles within 5 days, and they've still got some left!

So we scramble aboard... Oh, no!

There's a ladder!

Rather camp...

Updated!

This is the heavy stuff up here, isn't it?

These Russian T55 tanks were once the mainstay of the Warsaw Pact forces.

These were the weapons of our enemy.

-Will I start the machine?

-Start the machine, yeah.

In the New Europe, they're a tourist attraction and military training takes all of five minutes.

An awful lot of tap-twiddling and levers going and all that.

I mean, I hope I don't have to reproduce that!

ENGINE RUMBLES

I didn't really see how you did that, but...

This is the tank driving school

set up by an ex Cold War Commander who couldn't bear to see these machines go to waste.

"This is Russian technology," he told me earlier.

"You can do what you like with it!"

And I'll get my own specially shot video at the end of it!

To the left... to the right...

Left and right. Position one.

OK?

-Yep.

-And start!

-A little gas.

-OK, start.

Gas, gas, gas.

To the left, to the right. Steering forward.

Right forward.

Left forward.

-1500, 1500

-INAUDIBLE

Gas, gas, gas.

Gas, gas, gas.

Left, is that... More gas, 1500. RPM 1500.

-OK?

-OK.

OK, is the gear neutral?

MUFFLED CONVERSATION

Second gear, three gear.

-Three gear.

-Yeah.

-No, two gear.

-Two gear.

-Fully deployed. Position one.

-One, right.

Left and right.

-OK.

-ENGINE FALLS SILENT

Oh, shoot.

-OK?

-OK.

ENGINE TURNS OVER

Looking good now.

Gas, gas, gas.

Steering forward.

The left...steering forwards.

Left... Gas, gas, gas.

Gas!

Left...

Left.

Left.

Straight on.

Right.

Right. Straight on.

Straight on.

This is a much more comfortable assignment.

I'm in Karl Marx Allee in East Berlin with two young actors

who offer a city tour, which is also a small play about divided Berlin.

He jumps in the back without paying a penny.

Olaf Rauschenbach on the left plays the proud Eastie

and Jorg Pinch plays the cynical Westie.

I play the audience.

And the set for this particular act, is what remains of the Berlin Wall.

This is where the new Germany began - socialistic Berlin.

Let's have a look.

Getting in wasn't all that difficult!

But getting out!

What is the first thing you think of when you think of the GDR?

Aw! Well, a big wall!

The Wall! Well, the GDR were the wall!

Otherwise named as the anti-fascistic protective wall!

Or the stigma of German history!

Just imagine! You are 18 years old,

you are standing there, young and liable for military service

and also convinced that socialism is the right thing for the young GDR.

You're standing there, it's peace vigil.

The border between the two alliances on a watchtower.

You've sworn an oath.

I pledge as a soldier in the National People's Army

side by side with the Soviet Army and the armies of our allies, the United Socialist countries

that I'm prepared, at all times, to defend socialism against all enemies.

The cost of defending socialism along the whole length

of the Wall has been estimated as anything from 300 to 1,000 lives.

If there was one date which marked the end of the Cold War, it would be November 9th, 1989...

..the day the Wall fell.

So complete was the destruction of their city in World War Two

that most Berliners now live in huge concrete housing estates.

RHYTHMIC CLAPPING

This is one way of dealing with the problems of isolation and alienation.

Kerrin's Laughter Yoga.

-OK, Danke schon.

-Kerrin has ways of making you laugh!

-Ho-ho-ha-ha-ha!

-Ha-ha-ha...

HEARTY LAUGHTER

HEARTIER LAUGHTER

LAUGHING CONTINUES

ALL: Ho-ho, ha-ha-ha.

Ho-ho, ha-ha-ha.

SHE SPEAKS IN GERMAN

Ah! THEY ALL GRUNT

THEY ALL LAUGH

LAUGHTER CONTINUES

ALL: Ho-ho, ha-ha-ha.

Ho-ho, ha-ha-ha.

Ho-ho, ha-ha-ha.

Ho-ho, ha-ha-ha.

Ho-ho, ha-ha-ha.

SHE SPEAKS GERMAN

For the last ten minutes of the class, Kerrin gets us all to lie down, and laugh!

Group hilarity is not something I'd normally associate with the Germans, but this lot has no trouble!

THEY CHORTLE

So how long have you been coming to the classes?

I've been laughing here since last August!

You've been laughing since August -

that's pretty impressive!

Yes, only once a week!

Once a week, but you laugh during the rest of the week a lot?

Yes, I do, but not so long!

Not so long! It's very long, at the end on the carpet...

It's a very long time.

Well, you don't often get the chance to laugh for that long.

Nothing's that funny?

-I think it would be a little bit silly, maybe! Everybody would think you are a silly person!

-Yes!

You'd probably be taken out and...

Here you can be a like a child and the child is laughing!

And it's helped you, has it?

Yes. I think it helps everybody.

Everybody likes to laugh.

Maybe not everybody laughs but everybody likes it!

It's difficult to walk through Berlin without sensing ghosts of the past.

From the grand hopes of socialism, to the squares where the Nazis held their rallies.

But to be able to walk unhampered through the Brandenburg Gate is a reality.

A reality of a Germany re-united and hopefully a Europe re-united.

I'm leaving for my final destination aboard a DC3, which, nearly 60 years ago,

took part in one of the world's most extraordinary peacetime operations -

the Berlin Airlift.

In June 1948, the Russians, mistrustful of allied intentions,

closed off all road and rail links to the city of Berlin,

with the intention of taking control of the whole city.

For 11 months, American, British and French pilots joined together

in a massive siege-busting operation.

Two and a half million tons of food were flown in and at its peak,

the planes were landing at intervals no more than a minute apart.

This is one of the actual DC3s that flew during the Berlin Airlift, and they called them the Candy Bombers,

or the Raisin Bombers, from the habit of one American pilot

who would open his cockpit window and throw candy out

to the kids down below as he flew over the city.

I'm heading towards Rugen Island on Germany's Baltic Coast.

Here amid the sand dunes and the pine trees stands one of the more bizarre relics of the Third Reich.

It's a holiday camp.

Three miles long, with 10,000 rooms and accommodation for 20,000 people.

Built here at Prora between 1936 and 1939,

it was intended as a place where the good workers of Nazi Germany could build up their strength

and their collective will for the great struggle that lay ahead -

the conquest of Europe!

HE SPEAKS GERMAN

Overseen by Hitler's favourite architect, Albert Speer,

the camp at Prora was to be the embodiment of the Nazi policy of Kraft Durch Freude -

Strength Through Joy.

HE SPEAKS GERMAN

Instead of housing happy holidaymakers, Prora was filled

with evacuees from bombed cities and forced labour squads brought here from Nazi-occupied Europe.

Now, as then, no-one quite knows what to do with the place.

There's a museum, a few workshops, but the scale of this Nazi folly

has defied even the most ambitious development plans.

So it survives - neglected, empty and useless.

Well, I've finally reached the end of my journey

here on the shores of the Baltic, surrounded by the broken dreams

of the last attempt to unite Europe by force, but now, for the first time in history,

there's a real chance to create a Europe out of co-operation rather than conflict...

and that would be a mighty achievement - a new Europe indeed!

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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