Good bye, Lenin

Last tuesday i went to cinema and saw "Good bye, Lenin", a german film about the fall of the wall in Berlin in 1989 / 1990. The film came out in german cinemas already in february, but only now in the german original version in Switzerland.

The film has funny scenes but also sad ones, you laugh and cry ( at least i did ). I recommend highly to go watching it !

I went on my own to the cinema, because not many people around me understand enough german. Also, this film made me remember this period of the german history.

At the time i was 19 years old, just left my parents home to live with my boy-friend and finishing school. Actually everything seemed possible, in the west part we actually had no worries. But then they opened the borders and suddenly there were a lots of superbe appartments becoming vacant to very good rent-prices...but only for east-german people, not for us. It was always mentionned in the paper that preference would be given o east-germans, for the appartments, jobs etc. The market of second hand cars exploded, finally they were almost as expensive as new cars. I started to wish that they will close the borders again and re-build the wall....All these feelings and memories came back tuesday night, anger against the east-german people because they made it so difficult for my generation to start into life at 'our' place, a kind of 'happiness' to see all these people, the night they broke down the wall, falling in eachothers arms like brothers which haven't seen eachother since a long time. Also it reminded me of the fact that i'm german and that this is part of my history, and that i had assisted at such an important historical event.

To resume my feelings today about these event, i must admit that i'm still feeling mostly negative about the reunification. All this happened too fast. It's difficult to unifie two diiferent nations and mentalities in such a short time. For me, there will always be a difference between west and east germans. You cannot erase over 40 years of socialism in the peoples heads.

Although, i also must admit that i'm maybe not anymore in the right to judge the situation today as i live since 10 years in Switzerland. But the film made me re-think about all this, which is maybe one of its aims besides entertaining people.

links: technorati