I was born into a giant work camp. The conditions were way better than what people in North Korea or China have to deal with, and a lot of the inmates were quite happy to arrange themselves with life behind the iron curtain, but at the end of the day, you had no real choice. As I learnt much later, the slaves had rebelled every once in a while, and were quickly put in their place, which in many cases turned out to be in Siberia or other unfortunate environments. In general, you were raised to work as hard as you can ("from each according to his abilities"), only enjoy what was justifiable ("to each according to his needs"), and not ask questions. Guess who determined what your abilities and needs were.

For quite some time, I had no idea that I was not allowed to leave, so I foolishly took on the habit of dreaming about traveling and seeing phantastic places like Venezuela or Hong Kong. My dad had ended up working as a radio officer for the merchant marine, and sent postcards home from exotic countries with palm trees on them and shiny skyscrapers by the sea. I put a big world map on my wall and memorized the names of countries and cities and started learning English. Something told me I would need it

Little did I know that people trying to leave got shot in the back as Republikflüchtlinge — "refugees from the republic" — and their loved ones were subject to severe repercussions, surveillance, questioning, abrupt career endings

I grew up wishing, hoping, I would be allowed to study a subject I was interested in. Twice a year, our head teacher questioned each student about their ambitions — "Studienwunscherfassung", "study wish questionaire". They kept a record on how your streamlining was proceeding, and how you being helped to see the light and flow into the right channel. I was pretty bright on my own, so chances are, I may have ended up becoming whatever I wished to become, without having to twist myself into becoming an economist first. You see, economists were badly craved. Marxist economists, that is. I did not wish to become one, but I was being told this would be a pretty safe choice, and in the more intimidated stages of my teenage years, I was almost willing to sell out just to be allowed into university.

I became pretty depressed once it dawned to me that I might never be able to visit Caracas or New York, you see. I at least wanted to work in a job I could enjoy, even if the money I would earn would not allow me to travel anywhere but to East Berlin or other non-exotic places. East Berlin would have to do: There are parts of East Berlin from where you could see the sky-scrapers of West Berlin, going there might be the closest to living my dream of traveling the world I would ever get.

Secretly, or sometimes not secretly, I wished to become a photojournalist, a painter, a nuclear physicist, a shepherd, a nun, a novelist, an industrial designer. You know, like teenagers all over the world. Very few dream of becoming dialectic materialist economists. The entire idiocy of this field of study was pretty obvious in how well it made the economies of socialist countries run to begin with.

The shop shelves were rather, let's say, not overly complicated. And not exactly burdened with too much stuff. People were forced to be good at DIY — either you were brilliant, or you had to do without whatever it was you craved to possess and use. Money would most likely not buy it, no matter how hard to worked. My parents were pretty good at building toys for my brother and me. I remember one DIY magazine, Praktiker I think, that had a tutorial on how to make a — functioning — Rubik's Cube. Out of wood. People were smart enough to create and solve this puzzle, but to think of the wasted hours of your life building something that can be mass-produced for pennies, and this waste and idiocy was due to ideology and misguided economic fairy tales like dialectic materialism and planned economy.

I am quite amazed how I remember those terms now, , Studienwunscherfassung, as if I am living in a dream now and might wake up any minute and find out the last 25 years were just a dream. 25 years are sure enough for the big bad, pedophile, and mass-murdering commie to turn into nice, misunderstood uncle. A good idea, badly executed.

Well, how many examples do you need? I do not exactly see people lining up to move to Cuba, North Korea, or Venezuela. My brother lives in Australia now, which is perfect for a surfer dude like him. Did you know that surfing was illegal in communist East Germany, because people might have tried to flee via the Baltic Sea. Quite a few tried swimming.

The last East German to be shot before the fall of the wall was 20-year-old waiter . He had been dreaming of becoming a pilot or actor, but was not allowed to attend school long enough to qualify for any of these careers. His grave has been defiled several times.