Originally Posted by
kochleffel
I spent some time in East Germany 40 years ago when it was still the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. I had a camera with me but took almost no pictures, because our guide reeled off a long list of things it was unlawful to photograph and, to the extent that I could remember the list, there were hardly any scenes that didn't contain something verboten.
The guide, by the way, was a Communist Party hack and otherwise useless: he didn't know where anything was, took us to museums on the days they were closed, etc. He was always leaning out the window asking "Zum Bahnhof?" even though we didn't want to go to the Bahnhof at all.
In the late 70's I entered East Berlin through Check-point Charlie. At the time I was a camera buff and had lots of camera equipment with me (two camera bodies, zoom lenses, telephoto lenses, etc.). When I approached the American side of the check-point, I told them I had all this equipment and was fearful I would run into trouble on the other side of the wall. The US military agent said that I should not take pictures of the wall, as my only restriction. When I approached the East Berlin guard, he asked me to open my bag, he looked in and just waved me on (he didn't even pause for a second
). I took photographs all over EB. At one point using my 400mm (about 18" long) telephone lens I was photographing a harbor and looked up and noticed that I was in front of a police station and a uniformed officer was looking down at me, I just continued to take photographs and wandered along.
PS: That same summer I was hassled in Amsterdam by the hippies in Dam square when I photographed the area and in La Defense shopping center when I tried photographing the interior.