Lutherstadt Wittenberg in the DDR

Today we were mostly out of the classroom. There's a museum in the town that's called the House of History. It reminds me of the Amherst Museum, actually. It's just stuffed with memorablia from the DDR and they try to recreate everyday life in East Germany. There are complete rooms from different eras-- A living room from the 40's and one from the 70's, for example. There were kitchens from the 70's and 80's-- a recreated DDR Disko and a kid's room from the 80's (with a poster of Depeche Mode) for example. There was a little bit of stepping down memory lane for me, because a lot of the things were kind of similar to things we had as kids-- house coats, for example, from the 70's made of garish nylon (or, as it was called in the DDR-- Dederon--DDR-on, get it?) Wild patterned orange wallpaper, toy sewing machines (from plastic, but not so different from ones Mary and I had) There were lots of toys-- dollhouses, for example-- made in the DDR-- some for export to the west and the cheaper, plastic ones for the DDR kids. They had DDR Legos that looked exactly like the western ones but did not communicate.
The program had recruited some ladies from a nearby senior citizen's center to tour with us and it was really interesting to hear their memories. Some were older (in their 80's) and some were younger (in their 60's) and had different memories-- Of, for example, how they never used the word "Toaster"-- that was too western, instead "Brotruester" (Bread roaster), which was more acceptable to the regime. They recalled having outhouses (with the great German name of "Plumplsklos" (plop-johns)) until the mid 70's or 80's. They recalled their first trips to the West-- being so overwhelmed with choices that they went home with headaches-- all the kinds of shampoo, fruits, toys they had never seen before and did not understand.
They told with nostalgia about the good things in the DDR-- everyone got an education. People helped each other without being asked. There was a lot of inter-dependance and independence. The East Germans talk so much about "basteln"-- I had thought this meant "doing crafts", but the Germans here use it to mean rigging stuff up and doing things themselves. So, for example, all of the rooms were decorated with things that had been made at home-- needlecrafted hangings, embroidered towels-- or, my favorite was a set of vases that the tour guide said were very common to find-- they were made form metal that probably had been stolen from the factory. All of the East Germans laughed about their "polytechnic education"-- by this they meant that all of them had been trained in all of the arts. Men could sew and cook and knit and women were trained in metal work and car mechanics and so on. Our class moderator-- a funny type in her mid-80's said that she mocks Wessi women who don't know how to change a tire--- that she was taught plumbing and some beginning electircity and had that can-do attitude that gives her the confidence to get under the car and check out what the problem is in case of trouble. I wish I were more like that and I admire that here.