Visitors to Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin's Cold War border crossing, have been startled to find it manned by menacing East German border guards bellowing orders through loudspeakers and offering to search cars.
Strutting up and down the street with visa stamps at the ready, they could be mistaken for unemployed Communist coppers pining for the Berlin Wall and determined to relive the past.
PHOTO: REUTERS
In fact they're actors in original uniforms charging one euro to pose in photographs -- a new tourist attraction in a city where traces of the Cold War are fast disappearing, to the dismay of tourists.
"Sometimes we board tour buses and go up the aisle demanding to stamp documents," said Tom Luszeit, 30, clad in a green uniform of the Volkspolizei, East
Germany's police force.
"We have had cars pull over thinking we really want to search them. Some people come up to us asking in fake East German accents to be searched."
Others offer them bananas, once a rare delicacy in the command economy of the Communist German Democratic Republic.
Luszeit came up with the idea and got permission from the Berlin city authorities after two years of trying. He has been operating the Checkpoint at weekends for several months with a troupe of 10 fellow actors. Three go on patrol at a time.
Checkpoint Charlie divided the US and Soviet sectors of Berlin and was one of the most famous symbols of the Cold War. It was a crossing point for foreigners such as Allied diplomats, soldiers and western tourists.
Luszeit and his comrades, one dressed as an East German army major, were a hit with passing tourists as they handed out Communist era soldiers' caps and posed with them for souvenir photos in front of a replica Allied guardhouse and US flag.
Their position on the US side of the former border is historically inaccurate, but they did not get permission to station themselves further down the street on the eastern side.
"History is being forgotten so we thought we'd do something about it," said Luszeit, who also works as a stripper when not not on patrol.
"We tell people about the Wall. More of it should have been left intact as a reminder. They should also have left the watchtower and the barriers here."
"People don't know their East from their West anymore. When you ask them to point out which was which, many take a look at the grotty buildings in the west and say that was East Berlin."
Most of the 156km Wall has been removed since its legendary breach in 1989 brought down the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe for 40 years.
New office buildings and stores have filled what used to be the brooding, gray center of East Berlin, and it's the west of the city that is starting to look worse for wear.
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