City Tourists Visit East Berlin Home Nursing Examinations

Press, Volume C, Issue 29609, 4 September 1961, Page 2

City Tourists Visit East Berlin

Home Nursing Examinations

Two tourists from Christchurch entered East Berlin on foot on August 24, the day after the East German Ministry of the Interior announced tighter controls on the Berlin East-West border.

They are Mr B- H. Scott, aged 27, a civil engineer, and his sister, Miss>.Julie Scott, aged 23, an therapist who have relied their experiences in letters to their- parents, , The new controls announced the day before they crossed the border required West Berliners to obtain special permits, approved by the East Berlin police, before they, crossed into East- Berlin. It was also the day after the East Germans began walling up five of the 12 sector entry points. Mr Scott and his sister went to the Frederickstrasse, where they found Russian and American tanks confronting each other across the border.

“A West Berlin policeman stopped us,” says their diary, “but as soon as we showed our passports he let us through.’ “We walked across a gap in the road and the East Berlin police pointed to a gap

in the side street. We showed our passports there, and were allowed through.

“We walked up Maur street and saw Hitler’s bunker on our left, and then at the street before the Brandenburg Gate we were turned back. "The East Berlin policeman looked at our passports and was far more interested to see where we had been, as he seemed to be amusing himself just reading all the stamps and looking at our photos find grinning at us. "We walked along another block to the Under den Linden, and then back towards Marx Engels place, passing on the way many bombedout buildings as well as a few shops.” They spent two hours walking around the Eastern sector, and at one point were offered some map-reading assistance by two East German policemen. “We met one of those policemen again at the border,” says the diary, “and he smiled and said 'New Zealand, how? Ship or aeroplane?’ ” They told him, and crossed the border again with no difficulty. Miss Scott said she felt that life seemed to be going on in the same way on both sides of the border, and although there was tension there was not as much as she had expected. “It is apparently more a play of top power politics, which unfortunately affects the ordinary people,” she said.

She said more repairs of war damage seemed to have been done in the West. “The Eastern sector is what used to be the heart of Berlin,” she said, “but, unfortunately, they are not interested in that and have already blown up the old Royal Palace.”

The following candidates were successful in recent “ home nursing examinations conducted by the North Canterbury centre of the Red Cross Society: bar, Miss Eileen Horan and Mrs ; Antoinette McCallum; ad--1 vanced, Misses Edith Bull, . Mary Bull, Alma Rich, Mesdames Mary Hart (honours), and Patricia Jago; elementary, Mrs Joan Brown; St. George’s Hospital (elementary), Nurses E. Knox and E. Elsom.