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Ich Bin Ein Tannenbaum
On what used to be called the "death strip" in East Berlin, a market for Christmas trees has bloomed.
Bloomberg News reports that the city of Berlin needs to thin out the thousands of pine trees that have grown in the desolate zone before the Berlin Wall where those trying to flee the Stalinist hell of East Germany could be shot on sight. (More than 200 people were killed trying to escape over the wall, which went up in 1961.)
Germans who want to buy and chop down their own tree can do starting this weekend. A nearly 7-foot tree costs 10 euros, or about $14, Bloomberg says.
Christmas and the Cold War are strangely connected. The Berlin Wall started to come down in November 1989, and a celebration of its fall was marked on Christmas 1989, when Leonard Bernstein conducted a performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in the city. And of course Mikhail Gorbachev stepped down on Christmas 1991 as the Soviet Union fell apart.
