East Berlin

BERLIN -- At the big electronics plant in east Berlin, Bernhard Doering now takes ginseng tea in the morning with his new Korean colleague, Woongil Kim."It's one of our new tastes," Mr. Doering says.East Berlin's electronics workers have been acquiring these new tastes since Korea's global Samsung conglomerate took control of the plant at the first of the year.Hard work may be one of the new Samsung flavors."If you drink ginseng tea, you can do more work," says Mr. Kim. "Ten hours a day or more."

Last week, while driving to work, I heard an NPR story that included snippets of an interview with a woman who had just applied for a marriage license. This would not have been newsworthy if not for the fact that she was gay. On Nov. 6, voters in Washington, Maryland and Maine approved marriage equality laws. Last Thursday was the first day that gay and lesbian couples in Washington state could fill out forms and exercise their new right. It was a very long time coming, so I would have forgiven the woman for screaming with joy or drenching the microphone in tears, but that's not what she did. I didn't catch her name or what town she was from, but give or take a syllable, she said something like this: "It feels good to finally be normal," happily and wearily, as if she had finally set down a very heavy weight.

BERLIN -- On Buddha's birthday, Vietnamese here gather in their storefront temple on Krefelderstrasse to worship before an altar bedecked with fruit and flowers, silk lotus blossoms, burning candles and smoking incense.They sing and chant the sutras, eat spring rolls and curries, laugh with their children, sit under the old flag of South Vietnam, and talk of their lost homeland.The drapes are drawn and Berlin is shut out for a while. Vietnamese are under considerable pressure in Germany, especially in East Berlin and what used to be Communist Germany.

As we hovered over the poppy field in the volatile Helmand province of southern Afghanistan — a square patch of earth unremarkable for its rows of small cabbage-green plants in the furrowed soil — the pilot of the low-flying U.S. gunship told me, "We can land here if you'd like to take some notes and a few photos. You've got two minutes." "Why two minutes?" I asked. "Because," he replied evenly, " al-Qaida's guarding these fields." "Two minutes will be fine, sir."

Every year on the second Saturday in September, East Berlin, Pa., takes a giant step back in time. The sleepy town's main street is transformed into a Colonial village square. By 8 a.m., the space brims with potters and weavers, carpenters, quilters, candlemakers and even a blacksmith. Women wearing ankle-length skirts and aprons and men attired in old-fashioned breeches and straw hats command each booth, practicing their arts and selling their wares. Colonial Day is East Berlin's annual return to its roots.

Berlin -- At dinnertime a few nights ago, my wife and I stopped by the Moscau Restaurant, the place on Karl Marx Allee where East Berlin's communist elite would meet for a treat. The giant Sputnik was still on the roof and, in fact, the restaurant looked better than it used to -- candles, crisp linens and gleaming samovars made the main room more inviting than it ever was in the bad old days.But no one was there. A lone waitress looked across the room at us, longingly. We shook our heads.

On July 20, 2005, ALBERT F. "PETE"MEDURA, of East Berlin, PA, for merly of Pasadena, MD. Beloved husband of Joan C. Medura (nee Clark), he is survived by daughters Sharon Morningstar, Sandra Burns, Susan Griffith, Nancy Kramer, Peggy Harmer, and sons Lee Medura, Mike Medura, Jeffrey Welsh, and Robert Medura. 16 grandchildren, three great grandchildren and his sister, the late M. Joan Maisel and her husband Russell. Predeceased by parents; the late Albert F. and Evelyn (Criswell) Medura.

On Monday, July 28, 2003, at Lebanon VA Medical Center, RICHARD M. "Bear" KOUTCH, 55; husband of Berandette "Berni" (nee Wirdzek) Koutch; son of John R. and Barbara Jean (nee Whitt) Koutch of Stuart, FL; brother of Jane Holz, Jean Burger, both of W. Palm Beach, FL, Barbara Catalfumo of Singer Island, FL, Dawn and brother-in-law Lee Leonard of Shiloh, NC; predeceased by brothers Timothy and Mark Koutch; uncle of Timothy Koutch, Bradley Wolfe, Giovanni Catalfumo and Thomas W. McManis, III. Mr. Koutch was a Life Member of Richard J. Gross Post #8896, East Berlin.

"The File," by Timothy Garton Ash. Random House. 224 pages. (( $23.The Stasi were most sinister in their ordinariness.In East Germany, the police made their presence known. They stopped cars and searched the trains. They walked muzzled, leashed dogs past the tourists. But not the Stasi, the secret police with their vast network of informers. Their terrifying power came from being indistinguishable. Anyone might be a spy - the baker, the bus driver, the next-door neighbor.As it turned out, many were.

A Frederick County grand jury has indicted a former kindergarten teacher on charges of sexually abusing a child at school. State's Attorney J. Charles Smith acknowledged the indictment Wednesday of Matthew Berresford, 31, of East Berlin, Pa. Berresford couldn't be reached immediately for comment. He has no phone listing, and no defense attorney is listed in court records. Frederick County Public Schools spokeswoman Marita Loose says Berresford worked at North Frederick Elementary School.

A Frederick County grand jury has indicted a former kindergarten teacher on charges of sexually abusing a child at school. State's Attorney J. Charles Smith acknowledged the indictment Wednesday of Matthew Berresford, 31, of East Berlin, Pa. Berresford couldn't be reached immediately for comment. He has no phone listing, and no defense attorney is listed in court records. Frederick County Public Schools spokeswoman Marita Loose says Berresford worked at North Frederick Elementary School.

BERLIN -- More than 16 years after the wall fell, West Berlin and East Berlin have melded together enough that a visitor wandering around the city often can't tell which was which. But at a dingy gray building surrounded by concrete walls topped with barbed wire, there is no escaping the creepy feel of communism. This was a prison run by the East German secret police, the Stasi, which has been preserved as a memorial to the crimes of the past. Our guide today is a paternal figure with the learned air of a retired college professor.

Every year on the second Saturday in September, East Berlin, Pa., takes a giant step back in time. The sleepy town's main street is transformed into a Colonial village square. By 8 a.m., the space brims with potters and weavers, carpenters, quilters, candlemakers and even a blacksmith. Women wearing ankle-length skirts and aprons and men attired in old-fashioned breeches and straw hats command each booth, practicing their arts and selling their wares. Colonial Day is East Berlin's annual return to its roots.

On July 20, 2005, ALBERT F. "PETE"MEDURA, of East Berlin, PA, for merly of Pasadena, MD. Beloved husband of Joan C. Medura (nee Clark), he is survived by daughters Sharon Morningstar, Sandra Burns, Susan Griffith, Nancy Kramer, Peggy Harmer, and sons Lee Medura, Mike Medura, Jeffrey Welsh, and Robert Medura. 16 grandchildren, three great grandchildren and his sister, the late M. Joan Maisel and her husband Russell. Predeceased by parents; the late Albert F. and Evelyn (Criswell) Medura.

On Monday, July 28, 2003, at Lebanon VA Medical Center, RICHARD M. "Bear" KOUTCH, 55; husband of Berandette "Berni" (nee Wirdzek) Koutch; son of John R. and Barbara Jean (nee Whitt) Koutch of Stuart, FL; brother of Jane Holz, Jean Burger, both of W. Palm Beach, FL, Barbara Catalfumo of Singer Island, FL, Dawn and brother-in-law Lee Leonard of Shiloh, NC; predeceased by brothers Timothy and Mark Koutch; uncle of Timothy Koutch, Bradley Wolfe, Giovanni Catalfumo and Thomas W. McManis, III. Mr. Koutch was a Life Member of Richard J. Gross Post #8896, East Berlin.

A MEMORABLE EXPERIENCEBerlin 1989, on the brinkLeaving West Germany on our way to Berlin, we felt as if we had driven from a color movie into a black-and-white silent film. It was September 1989, and the Berlin Wall and communism still stood.As we drove through an opening in a dense border of barbed wire at Bay-reuth, armed guards stopped our car. They scrutinized our passports and instructed us to go directly to Berlin without leaving the highway at any time.Remembering the colorful and lively towns in West Germany, we were disheartened by the bleakness we encountered.

BERLIN -- The then-East German Stasi secret police helped Libya organize the 1988 bombing of a jumbo jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, a well-placed Stasi officer says.But it is not believed that the nation's leaders knew anything of this activity.The officer and experts in the field also believe that the Stasi -- East Germany's secret police and intelligence service, which has since been disbanded -- made the attack and other acts of terrorism possible through years of organizational help, training and logistics for Libyan agents.

BERLIN -- The story goes that the Jewish community of Adass Jisroel died when its members fled or were murdered during the Holocaust.For years, people believed the story. East Berlin used some of Adass Jisroel's property as offices, West Berlin built apartments on other pieces of its land, and the official Jewish Community of Berlin gave its seal of approval to the actions.But Adass Jisroel never really died.Much to the surprise and embarrassment of the Jewish Community of Berlin and Berlin authorities, Adass Jisroel has re-emerged after 50 years as a small but vigorous Orthodox Jewish community.

"The File," by Timothy Garton Ash. Random House. 224 pages. (( $23.The Stasi were most sinister in their ordinariness.In East Germany, the police made their presence known. They stopped cars and searched the trains. They walked muzzled, leashed dogs past the tourists. But not the Stasi, the secret police with their vast network of informers. Their terrifying power came from being indistinguishable. Anyone might be a spy - the baker, the bus driver, the next-door neighbor.As it turned out, many were.

Heiner Mueller, 66, the enfant terrible of the stage under communism in East Germany and one of Europe's best-known playwrights, died Saturday of cancer in Berlin. His death was announced by the Berliner Ensemble, a theater founded by Bertolt Brecht in East Berlin after World War II that Mr. Mueller took over as artistic director in 1992. His early plays celebrated East German socialism, but he was banned after later works blamed communism for oppression, violence and anguish. Among his most popular plays was "Germania Death in Berlin," which dealt with the building of the Berlin Wall and a failed 1953 workers' uprising in East Germany.