Slowly the “time between the years” is passing by and soon the year 2006 will be gone. Everybody will celebrate the turn of the year in a personal manner, with or without New Year’s pledges, with or without fireworks, with or without looking back  at the old year, with friends, with family or alone, with masses of people in Trafalgar or Times Square, in their own appartment or somewhere completely different, maybe even abroad.

To all people, however they will celebrate, we pass our best wishes for a good start and a successful 2007. And maybe you will pass around to read this blog from time to time in the new year as well.

Over new year our good friend from London, Michael, is visiting again having arrived with Ryanair on Friday evening. So yesterday we had the whole day to do something as we did not want just to hang around. What do you do with visitors around? You look for exhibitions and museums. Michael had been in Berlin for a few times, especially with Derek in the period when I had no contact with them. Then you start thinking what he might not know already.

Then I remembered the GDR Museum, which had opened here in Berlin on 15 July 2006. It is a relatively small museum, giving a good overview however of the every day culture in the German Democratic Republic. The concept is quite interesting as well, one may touch many exhibits or even leaf through notes or test GDR games. A visit costs you about an hour if you do it thoroughly and it is well worth a visit in any case.
Just an additional personal thought: I as a total West German I hardly have any GDR experience at all, and therefore I visited without personal remembrances. And honestly, for me the museum could as well exist in the West with a title like “Petit bourgeois in the 60s and 70s”. Apart from the political specialities of course, but then these were an expression of peziz bourgeoisie as well.