"Well, I'm in Slovakia!" "It's a bit of a shock after the flatlands of Poland to find yourself confronted with an 8,000-foot mountain range in the heart of Europe!" "But these are the High Tatras, part of the Carpathian range, and I've got to cross them to begin the last stage of my journey through Slovakia, the Czech Republic and into East Germany!" "Once through Slovakla and across the Czech Republic," "I'll be following the river Elbe through Eastern Germany from Dresden to Berlln, then onto journey's end at Ruegen Island on the Baltlc coast." "Slovakla Is one of Europe's newest countries, splitting from Czechoslovakla, by mutual agreement, just 1 4 years ago." "But always considered the underachiever of the Czecho-Slovak partnership, with a slower, more rural way of life." "In the mountain villages, little seems to have changed." "Today the people who live here have killed a pig." "Alena, a Slovak married to a Welshman, lives nearby." "What are they gonna do now?" "Are they going to!" "I think they are going to!" "0bviously they need to clean it, and I think they boil the water!" " They're preparing the cauldron outside!" " Yeah!" "ALENA:" "You can help cleaning!" "Alfonse is saying perhaps you want to take your coat off!" "I don't want to do it at all, but I'll do it!" "(MAN LAUGHING)" "ALENA:" "They are asking, "Are you married?"" "PALIN:" "Yeah, yeah, I'm married!" "What difference does that make?" "ALENA:" "So don't do it like with the woman, you've got to go really for it, go for it!" "That's right!" "PALIN:" "Sorry, I'm a city boy!" "Not used to all this!" "For young Slovaklans, a day like this could soon be a thing of the past," "and scenes like this confined to EU-approved premises." "0kay!" "0h!" "0h!" "Hey, that's great!" "(ALL EXCLAIMING) 0h, sorry!" "0h, dear!" "Oh, dear, Indeed." "Next time the ladies take safe sausage precautions." "PALIN:" "I don't know the Slovakian for stop!" "(ALL LAUGHING)" "0kay, there!" "0kay!" "All right, yeah!" "You want me to try!" "0kay?" "None of the pig will be wasted." "What Isn't eaten today will be stored away for the winter." "PALIN:" "This is all parts of the pig, isn't it?" "After work I ask Alena about Slovakla." "Did you feel that Slovakia had to be its own nation in order to sort of realise what it wanted?" "Probably, yes, because through the history, we always!" "Through the centuries we always had either" "Hungarian or Austrian monarchy over us and we never could say what we wanted or do what we wanted, and we did what they told us!" "And so, it's a good time!" "We are learning to stand on our own!" "It's funny, really, isn't it?" "There's a process in Europe seems to be going on of interconnections through the European Union, through transport and all that sort of thing!" "At the same time, more and more small nations springing up, who feel they can only realise what that nation wants by being independent!" "(MAN SINGING TRADITl0NAL S0NG)" "At a time like this the old songs are always the best." "Even If no one can remember them." "(CHUCKLING) You're making that up!" "You're making that up!" " Even I know that!" " ALENA:" "Actually, you've caught him!" "I'm almost tempted to say It's been a pig of a day, but I won't." "Well, it's time to leave the snows of the High Tatras behind and back onto the plain and rest to my penultimate country, the Czech Republic!" "Belng In the European Union has helped the Slovaks emerge from the Czech shadow, and tourism In the Tatras Is one of the big hopes" "In an Increasingly optimistic future." "I've crossed my 1 9th border Into Brno, the second city of the Czech Republic." "Brno Is a solid manufacturing town with a few surprises off the main drag." "In thls unglamorous little theatre, the Czech tradition of satirical mime" "Is carried on by one of its most Illustrious practitioners," "Tlbor Turba." "Martina Prochazka!" "Could you be so kind?" "Try to!" "Play, play in the time, try to express as big as possible palette of different expressions of red colour!" "Martlna, asked to mime the colour red, seems to set herself almost literally on fire." "0kay, fine, yeah!" "Michael, may I ask you, could you be so kind, and could you make a study of le coq?" "PALIN: (LAUGHING) 0h, God!" "Could you use this mask?" "This is Capitano, you know?" "Yeah!" "If there is some correspondence between the character of the coq" " And character of Capitano!" " I see, okay!" " Let's try!" "Let's try!" " All right!" "And don't forget now this mask, more moments longer!" "Don't be afraid to stop!" "You know, to make so-called representative positions!" "I model my performance on everything I wanted to be when I was young, but never dared." "They love lt." "Now that, you know, you're free, nobody is oppressing you, does that sense of humour still!" "Is it still satirical?" "Is it still having a go at the Establishment?" "In some sense stupid, but not this!" "Elementary things are rather clearly changed, but in details there are still so many problems!" "And we can be ironic against many things, and I know people which go on with this excellent humour, which makes some sort of cleaning!" " It's like kidneys or!" " Yes, I know, kidneys!" " Kidneys which clean your blood!" " Yes, yeah!" "I feel people like Turbo are happier with something to fight against." "In the new Europe we're all theoretically free, and, of course, encouraged to keep moving." "A smooth tilting train that's come from Vlenna carries me northwards, and Pllsner lager, one of the Czechs' finest contributions to the world, helps the journey slip by." "Nestllng In the western mountains of the Czech Republic" "Is a town where all excess can be cured In excessively plush surroundings." "Karlovy Vary, once the German town of Karlsbad, sits on a bed of healing waters." "And there are people who tell you how best to make use of them." "Mllada Sarova, who runs this clinic, has treated such Icons of New Europe as Gorbachev and Czech president Vaclav Havel, so she's a force to be reckoned with." "I prescribe you now how you drink the water!" "And to this you make two or three treatments every day!" "Right!" "This water which is very, very special!" "0ur water is in a colonnade!" "We drink the water from these cups!" "We drink the water every time on empty stomach, because you'll see," "we wash mechanically all digestive system!" " Your stool is normal?" " Drinking is special!" "I think so, yes!" "Because when the people have constipation, they must drink water 30 degrees Celsius!" "My body just doesn't know what it's got to look forward to!" "And how long is this programme?" " You drink the water around 1 0 minutes!" " How many days?" " How many days?" " The best is 20 days!" "20 days!" "Because every day we drink around five cups!" "It is one litre!" "And when you really drink 20 litres, your liver can regenerate!" "PALIN:" "You deal with the heart as well as the body!" " The mind and the body!" " Yeah!" "Complex, our body, our mind and our soul!" "When everything is healthy and happy, it means we can speak about the vapours!" "PALIN:" "Can you tell from somebody quite quickly whether they're happy or unhappy or likely to be depressed?" "I think the love is very important in life because everybody who is in love, they are happy and much nicer!" " 0h, love, I thought you said laugh!" " I said love!" " Love, love!" " Love, love!" "Love is very happy!" "Also love is very painful for some people!" "They have very unhappy affairs!" "No, no, I think when you really found the second!" " The woman found the good man!" " Yes!" "And it is really this very good love which means they must be happy" " Because!" " Good sex, really!" "Sex is very important because the lymphic system and all this hormonal situation in the body is very important!" "And I think the people don't make enough love, sex, now, because they don't have time for this!" "It needs time, too!" "Time is very important!" "Can you give me a prescription?" "So star-studded Is Mllada's clientele that I find myself In a bag full of Ice-cold C02 next to the current Mlss World." " Hello!" " Hello!" "You're looking radiant!" "I think white is definitely your colour!" "Tatlana Kucharova Is the first Czech girl ever to win the title." "It's like your body is bursting!" "Can you feel it?" "(AIR BL0WING)" "Depends on the wind!" "The carbon dioxide wind treatment Is Intended to dilate the capillaries, causing to skin to radiate a smooth therapeutic glow." "PALIN:" "Hmm!" " Are you feeling any better for this?" " I think!" " Are your!" " I think it will come later!" "Your skin is sort of opening up and then something's happening!" "It's a bit like going to the dry cleaner's!" "Have you ever been in a bag, a plastic bag, before?" " No, never, this is first time!" " Me, too!" " And I'm older than you!" " How do you feel in it?" "How have I missed out on this all my life?" "Anyway!" "Sleep!" "We have to sleep, so here we go!" "It's an odd feeling, isn't it?" "I think you need really to have someone to tell you that this is good for you, don't you?" "0therwise it's like sitting in a warm, wet bath with a lot of gravel up your backside!" " It's quite dirty!" " It is quite dirty!" "So have you been to Karlovy Vary many times?" "Yeah, I've been here many times, but this is first time here in spa centre!" "The success of the private clinics may make Karlovy Vary glow with health, but the town's most valuable resource Is free." "Every day the place Is full of people taking nature's medicine." " You have to drink it fresh!" " PALIN:" "Fresh?" "Yeah!" "PALIN:" "Yeah, fresh, and here it comes up from the earth!" " PALIN: 0kay?" " Yeah!" "PALIN:" "Well, mmm!" "The clinics may be all futuristic hl-tech, but on the street It's traditional porcelain mugs and elegant old colonnades." "Here's another one!" "I've heard they get hotter, is that right?" "Yeah, it is!" " And, oh, yeah!" " 62!" "PALIN: 62 it says, yes!" " 62 is quite hot, isn't it?" " Yeah, it is!" "Well, here we go!" " I actually prefer it that way!" " Yeah?" "You like it better?" "Yeah!" "I like it better than the lukewarm!" "This is like a sort of a hot cuppa!" "So we are not the only!" "We are not the first ones in history!" "No, we are not!" "A lot of famous people drink this water!" " Yeah!" " For example Goethe," " Beethoven, Karl Marx!" "A lot of others!" " And now Miss World!" "Yeah, maybe I'm the first one!" "Karlovy Vary fosters the impression that time has stood still, an Illusion reinforced tonight at the Hotel Pupp with an Arlstocrats Ball." "New Europe seems a world away as those from rich and well-connected families greet each other like old friends." "But there are occasional lmpostors." " Enjoy your evening!" " Thank you!" "Thanks!" "Pleasure to meet you!" " H0STESS:" "Please come!" " Thank you!" "Hello, hello, we've come all the way from London to see this!" " H0STESS:" "Are you Mr World?" " Mr World?" "Well, I'll think about that, that's very good!" "Welcome!" "Yes, maybe you are if you're with Miss World!" "Thank you, thank you very much!" "Good evening!" "Thanks!" "Mr and Mrs World!" "It's rather good, isn't it?" "I like that!" "It's a spectacular room." "But I thlnk Tatlana and I have made the mistake of sitting down too soon." " It's an amazing place!" " It's a different type of world" " From what I know!" " Yeah, different kind of world!" " Totally!" " Yeah, me too!" " We're not aristocrats!" " No, we are not!" "PALIN:" "It's interesting to observe, though, isn't it?" "Don't you like to look at a world I don't really know much about!" " It's very different!" " !" "To see how they work?" "TATIANA:" "Different world!" "Suddenly an aristocrat spots me." " Mr Palin!" "I'm a huge fan of yours!" " Hello!" "0h, thank you!" "Thank you!" "I was admiring your spectacular medal!" "And this is Tatiana!" " Good evening!" "Nice to meet you!" " Nice to meet you!" "What is this award?" "It's the Sicilian 0rder of the Knights of the Collar of Saint Agatha!" " The Sicilian 0rder!" " Yes!" "!" "Of the Knights of the!" "The Knights of the Collar of Saint Agatha, yeah?" "From the 1 1 th century, you have three royal houses in Italy!" "You have the house of Paterno-Aragon, you have the house of Savoy and Bourbon!" "So, Bourbon is the!" "Do I need to!" "My great-grandmother was an Irish orphan, but I don't particularly want to bring that one up." "And the House of Paterno-Aragon is the 0rder of the Collar of Saint Agatha!" " Lf you go to Catania!" " Yes, Catania!" " !" "You can always!" " In Sicily, yes!" "Yes, in February we always have the Feast of Saint Agatha!" "That's the main event for us!" "(0RCHESTRA PLAYING WALTZ MUSIC)" "The period flavour of the Arlstocrats Ball" "Is so immaculately recreated that one can almost forget that two World Wars ever happened." "I mean, these people's families organised the Crusades." "Prague, an hour's drive from Karlovy Vary, was spared the devastation that the Second World War" "Infllcted on so many European capitals." "It's splendidly rich In history, but doesn't take itself too seriously." "Prague's architecture Is a bit of everything, from the Gothlc houses by the Cathedral on the hill to the majestic neo-Classlcal bulk of the Rudolflnum Concert Hall." "The 600-year-old Charles Bridge Is packed 20 hours a day as people squeeze down the tourist trail they call "The Golden Mlle. "" "But there Is a quieter way to see the city." "For the price of a pedalo I get a view not just of Prague, but of the Czech Republic from local girl Bara Vacullkova." "Do you regard any of the nations and the countries around as their natural allies?" "Is there one sort of people that the Czechs tend to like more than others or understand better than others?" "I think we get along with the Slovaks the most, of course, because of the link, but we also think that the Slovakian girls come to the Czech Republic to steal our good-looking boys!" "And in general, I think we don't really much like Germans because of all the oppressions and all the wars, and it's been like thousands of years of our fights with Germans!" "And we think they're a little too strict and not any flexible and no fun at all!" "I daren't ask about the Brltlsh." "Our stag parties love Prague." "What's essentially Czech, do you think?" " I think it's the humour!" " Yeah?" "I think it's the dark humour!" "We're very ironic and sarcastic, and we like it about ourselves!" "We like to make fun of everything and take everything lighter than like the!" "From the lighter perspective!" " Are you very sociable?" " Well, I am!" "I am and definitely I think so!" "I think Czechs are every social!" "You can see people hanging out together all the time!" "It's very based on friendship and community and bunches of people that gather together!" "It's not only like you have one friend, but basically people usually have at least like a group of 1 0 friends that they hang out with!" "Bara's friends are based around a singing group to which she belongs called the Yellow Slsters." "Tonlght they and their band will be playing at a riverside castle at Ustl." "I tag along." "As the Industrial sprawl of northern Bohemia slips by, the Yellow Slsters discuss the show." "(SPEAKING CZECH)" "All of them have studied In West Africa, and their music reflects a strong Afrlcan Influence." "(W0MEN SINGING)" "Thls seems very Czech." "I can't imagine an English band being allowed to do this sort of thing" "In the restaurant car." "When the castle at Ustl finally comes In sight," "I feel I know the concert pretty well, and privileged to have had my rlngslde seat In the restaurant car," "I head back to Prague." "The thousands of graves huddled together In the city's Jewlsh cemetery reflect the size and strength of the old Jewlsh community In Prague." "But for people like Llsa Mlkova, life changed catastrophlcally when the Nazls marched In In 1 939." "She and her family were sent north to the old garrison town of Terezln." "Under the chilling motto "Work Makes You Free';" "an overcrowded ghetto was created." "It was here In 1 944 that the Nazls made a propaganda film to be called The Fuhrer Gives the Jews a City!" "The forced smiles, the hastily cleaned up areas, helped blind the world, Including Red Cross Inspection teams, to the realities of the Nazls'genocldal policy." "This was something that happened anyway!" "Yes, this really happened!" "That really happened!" " Here are the gardens!" " And here you see the gardens!" "LISA:" "There were around Terezin," " There were a lot of vegetable fields!" " Right!" "And there we had to work!" "0f course, these vegetables were not for us!" "The Germans came every second day with cars to carry these vegetables away!" "And there were guards, and when they saw that we would eat one tomato or one turnip, it was terrible!" "We were punished and sent to Poland!" "The truth of Terezln Is that of the 1 44,000 Jews who passed though, 1 2 1,000 died, either here on forced marches or In the concentration camps they were sent to." "I lost my parents here, I saw them for the last time!" "But then when I came to Auschwitz, and then to the work camp near Dresden, to Freiberg, we remembered Terezin as a spa!" "In February 1 945, Allled bombers carried out a massive raid on Dresden, wiping out its historic centre and killing an estimated 35,000 people." "LISA:" "We lived so near Dresden that we saw this bombardment" "In February." "They locked us in the factory and we saw the planes!" "I must say, today, that we were so happy when we saw the English planes, yes!" "And it was of course a possibility that something could also destroy our factory where we were" "locked up, but we didn't think about that, and we were so happy that we didn't think about those deaths in Dresden and those deaths and such!" "We said, "Oh, something, something, yes." ""They do something, they will help us." "They will free us. "" "Yes, this was our thinking and It gave us so many strengths." "When I say something to a German, he looks at me whether I'm normal, but it was like that!" "PALIN:" "Today's Dresden Is a symbol of resurrection, a rebuilt city In a reunited Germany." "Slxty-two years ago, this was a burning shell." "Now, beside the banks of the Elbe, the Saxon capital Is reborn." "There are symbols of reconciliation," "Ilke the cross made by a Brltlsh bomber pilot's son." "It sits on top of the rebuilt Frauenklrche, which had been left as a pile of rubble by the Communlsts of the GDR, the German Democratic Republic." "Hlgh on the dome, I meet Fellx Zschoge." "Were you born and bred in Dresden?" "I was, in 1 986!" "I'm 21 years old right now!" "And the memories of the bombing, that awful bombing in 1 945, was that something you sort of learned about at school?" "My grandma told me about it!" "She saw the bombing from about 20 kilometres away, and the sky was burning!" "She still doesn't talk about it a lot, but it's a part of our history, and even German Democratic Republic is a part of our history, even though I don't know much about it!" "I was three when the Berlin Wall fell!" " It's a part of our identity, I guess!" " Yes!" "So, most people think it's a good thing!" " It's a good thing!" " To unite!" "See, I don't know much about it, but what my parents tell me is that not everything was wrong in the German Democratic Republic!" "I guess it was a larger community, everybody was helping each other and yeah, not everything was wrong!" "That's what they always tell me!" "Yeah, that's interesting, yeah!" "But there is, now we say, some people still have that wall in their heads!" "It's a symbol, a metaphor!" "It means that even so, now at 1 7 years after reunification, there is still segregation between the Eastern part and the Western part, and it's probably gonna take another generation to get rid of that wall in the heads of people!" "We have a last chance to admire the flamboyant skyline of the new Old Dresden as we slide away down the Elbe on Europe's oldest steamboat service." "It's a mixture of hl-tech and low-tech." "In almost anywhere else but Germany, machinery like this would have been In a museum, but here It Is paddling us through the Saxon countryside." "Well now, on this rather pleasant peregrination, we've paddled our way down to the town of Meissen, world-famous, of course, for only one thing, china!" "Melssen hardly resembles the cliched East German city." "It's pretty, unspoilt and its success Is based on very expensive objects." "A secret formula for making porcelain was discovered here almost 300 years ago." "Collectors have pushed up the prices, and some of these camp little figurines go for over * 1,000." "I prefer my china a little more down-to-earth." "Llke the bathroom appliances they make In thls factory relocated here from West Germany." "Thls state-of-the-art operation has provided a big boost for an East German economy only slowly catching up with the wealthier West." "I'm shown round by a lady from head office." "Was it that there was a tradition of porcelain-making around Dresden and Meissen?" "Was that important?" "Yes, I mean, the region is very famous for people really educated in producing ceramic ware!" "They already have the feeling how to produce ceramic ware!" "That's important, is it, the feeling?" "It's not just making any old product!" "Absolutely, because it's a material that is all nature!" "I love the palnt-spraylng robot, like a dentist's chair gone mad." "And the showroom products are now!" "The finished!" "When the job is finished, as we get into terrible puns," " They're all!" " Yes!" "So, what's that?" "That's a sort of unconventional!" "Well, yeah, actually, I'd like to show you that first, maybe, if you want to!" "That's what!" "That's the sort of one I associate with Germany particularly," " Where there's a sort of flat pan!" " Absolutely!" "And so it doesn't drop into the water, your thing!" "Exactly!" "We call it washout model, and it has very practical reason, actually, a medical reason, so, as we say, you can examine your business when you've made a number two so that!" "Is that something that Germans do?" "I mean, are you brought up to examine your business, as it were?" " Yes, you do, yes!" " Really?" "I mean, especially elderly people should do that regularly!" "They should check on their sanity as well on that point!" " Their sanity?" " And!" "Yes!" " Sanitary!" " 0n their health!" "Their health, yes, sanity is all mental!" " Exactly!" " But probably the same!" "We've been talking too much about sanitary ware," "I'm coming back on sanity!" "Sanity ware, I like that, it's a very good, very good lavatory!" "Yeah, and that's why a lot Germans use it and!" "Is it still popular, then, that particular style?" "Yes, it is very popular in Germany, there are some also in Switzerland, some in Netherlands, but mostly in Germany, people are used to it!" "And they like to do it in that way!" "So, for those who don't like it in that way, we have a kind of mixture where you can do both!" "More regular!" "Also, perhaps you can enlighten me!" "I've heard that there's a custom now for German men to actually sit down when they're having a pee, and it's become quite an important, almost a political thing!" "That's what men should do, is it?" "Yeah, I have to laugh about that because that's a very frequent question!" "It is true that a lot of German men have decided to sit when they pee!" "They don't like to speak too much about it because they still consider it as not very masculine!" "But they do, they do more and more, yeah!" "Satlrlcal cabaret has a long tradition In Germany, and during the Communlst period It was one of the few arenas" "In which criticism could be voiced, albeit carefully and Ingenlously." "(SPEAKING GERMAN)" "(CR0WD LAUGHING)" "Gunther Bohnke performed throughout the days of the GDR, when they had full houses every night." "Tonlght here In Lelpzlg, the cast and the audience are reliving some of the old sketches that wowed them In the '60s and '70s, when satire had a real purpose." "Lelpzlg, with its big International trade fairs, was the city where the GDR met the rest of the world, and the state security police known as the Stasl were a strong presence." "Gunther explains to me the way the Stasl worked and what they were trying to achieve." "Well, the idea of these people was, as I think the Minster of State Security once said," ""We have to go into every flat," ""into every bar, into every head!" ""We have to know what people think, what people plan, what people do!"" "And they had lots and lots of information!" "I mean, they had six million people in their archives!" "Did people disappear?" "I mean, did you know of someone who just suddenly was off the streets and you didn't see them again?" "In the '50s there was a saying, if you tell a joke in the restaurant and somebody hears it, you will disappear to Siberia!" "And when I was a small boy, I always thought, "What did they mean by," ""'You will disappear to Siberia'?"" "Well, it meant you were sent to the Gulag in the '50s!" "Until '61 you could be!" "There was the death penalty in East Germany, and you could be shot by the Stasi in Leipzig till '61!" "The Runden Ecke, or round corner, was the bland building from which the Stasl spied on the people of Lelpzlg." "Now It's a museum where people can spy on the Stasl." "Preserved In all its banal colourlessness," "It feels more like a small-town technical college than a place where thousands of lives were watched," "listened to and often destroyed." "It's extraordinary how, you know, the evil of the system emanated from just a little office like this!" "You didn't need much!" "The telephone, the filing system, enormous amount of details kept on everybody, and, of course, the shredder!" "Vital things!" "Then the tea and the coffee maker and the map!" "But enormous numbers of people's lives disrupted from this room!" "It really is an example of the bureaucracy of oppression!" "One of those who fought the system and ultimately won" "Is Hans Zlmmerman, a key naturalist turned environmental campaigner." "The town of Bltterfeld, where he was born and brought up, was the centre of East Germany's chemical Industry." "A hundred factories employing 30,000 workers poured tons of untreated effluent Into the rivers and onto the land." "By the 1 980s, Bltterfeld was a toxic dump." "After taking me on a tour of Bltterfeld as It Is today," "Hans Invltes me to his home." "(SPEAKING GERMAN)" "Thank you, thank you!" "He wants me to meet Margo Mlosga, a journalist who helped him make a TVexpose which brought Bltterfeld's pollution to a world audience." "Hans had already been brought to the attention of the Stasl." "PALIN:" "How big were the files?" "How many!" "How fat was the!" "(SPEAKING GERMAN)" "PALIN:" "It's up here!" "PALIN:" "And this is just information about Hans and!" "MARG0:" "Yeah, you see it!" "(SPEAKING GERMAN)" "3,228 pages!" "So he read his files very consciously, without problems!" "So, what was shocking for him was the result, what the Stasi decided what should have been done with him!" "Destroy the marriage!" "Make him impossible that he never gets a job again!" "Make him a criminal!" "And lock him away!" "So, that was how the Stasi worked always!" "They had a like strategic development!" "0ne thing really was, what they often did, they destroyed families!" "Does Hans feel any nostalgia for the GDR?" "MARG0:" "It was my life!" "I did live it!" "I did want to live it differently, in another way, in the right way!" "The loss, environmental loss, wasn't good in the GDR!" "They didn't regulate them!" "And if they would have done this properly, a lot of things were easier for me!" "I only wanted to be a human being!" "Today blo-fuel crops and wind farms mark the landscape of a new, cleaner Germany." "These wide flatlands on the Polish-German border are ideal tank country!" "And during the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact had 7,000 tanks here, which they reckoned they could get to Marseille within five days!" "And they've still got some left!" "PALIN:" "So, we scramble aboard?" "0h, no!" "0h, a little ladder!" "That's rather camp!" "Dainty!" "Aah!" "This is the heavy stuff up here, isn't it?" "These Russlan T-55 tanks were once the mainstay of the Warsaw Pact forces." "These were the weapons of our enemy." " Start the machine?" " Start the machine, yeah!" "In the New Europe, they're a tourist attraction, and military training takes all of five minutes." "PALIN:" "Awful lot of tap-twiddling and levers going and all that!" "Hope I don't have to reproduce that!" "(ENGINE REVVING)" "PALIN:" "I didn't really see how you did that!" "Thls Is the Panzer Fahrschule, a tank driving school set up by an ex-Cold War commander who couldn't bear to see these machines go to waste." ""Thls Is Russlan technology, " he told me earlier." ""You can do what you like with lt. "" "And I'll get my own specially shot video at the end of lt." "MAN:" "Okay, steering, the left steering to the right steering, little more." " Left and right to position one." " Okay." " Okay?" " Yeah." " And start." "A little gas." " It's okay to start?" "Gas, gas, gasl Steerlng forward." "MAN:" "To the left, to the right, steering forward." "1 5 onwards." " Rlght forward?" " Left forward." "And gas. 1 5 onward. 1 5 onward." "The RPM." " What?" " The RPM." " Yeah, I know that." " The gas, gas, gasl" "MAN:" "Gas, gas, gasl PALIN:" "Sorry." " Left, Is that?" " Oh, no." " MAN:" "More on gas, 1 5..." " More on gas, okay." "RPM 1 5 onwards, okay?" " (SIGHING) Okay." " Okay." "Okay, It Is In gear." "Do you want to try lt?" "MAN:" "Okay, can you start It now?" "Oh, no, that Is not right." "Second gear..." " Three gear?" " Yeah." " No, that's the three gear." " Okay." "MAN:" "Thls Is how It works, okay?" "The steering Is position one." " MAN:" "Posltlon one." " One, right?" "MAN:" "Left and right." " Okay, go." " Oh, shoot." "(EXCLAIMS ANGRILY)" "MAN:" "More on gas." " Okay?" " Okay." "(ENGINE STARTING)" "Gas, gas, gasl" "MAN:" "Steerlng forward." "MAN:" "The left steering forward." " The left steering..." " Gas, gas, gasl Gas. 1 5 onwards." "MAN:" "And left." "Left, leftl" "Left." "Stralght on." "Stralght on." "MAN:" "Keep steering." "Go right." "MAN:" "Rlght." "Stralght on." "Stralght on." "PALIN:" "Thls Is a much more comfortable assignment." "I'm In Karl Marx Allee In East Berlin with two young actors who offer a city tour, which Is also a small play about divided Berlln." "They stabbed us in the back without paying a penny!" "PALIN:" "Olaf Rauschenbach, on the left, plays the proud Eastle, and Jorg Plntsch plays the cynical Westle." "I play the audience." "And the set for this particular act Is what remains of the Berlln Wall." "This is where the new Germany began, socialistic Berlin!" "Just have a look!" " Getting in wasn't all that difficult!" " (LAUGHING) But getting out!" "What is the first thing you think of when you think of the GDR?" "PALIN: 0h!" "A big wall!" "B0TH:" "The Wall?" "But how are the GDR with the Wall?" "0therwise named the Anti-Fascistic Protector Wall!" "0r the stigma of German history!" "Just imagine, you are 1 8 years old!" "You are standing there!" "Young and liable for military service, and also convinced that socialism is the right thing for the young GDR!" "You're standing there, it's peace vigil!" "The border between the two alliances!" "0n a watchtower, you've sworn an oath!" "I pledge, as a soldier in the National People's Army, side by side with the Soviet Army and the armies of our allies, the United Socialist Countries, that I'm prepared at all times to defend socialism against all enemies!" "PALIN:" "The cost of defending Soclallsm along the whole length of the wall has been estimated as anything from 300 to 1,000 lives." "If there were one date which marked the end of the Cold War," "It would be November 9th, 1 989." "The day the Wall fell." "So complete was the destruction of their city In World War II that most Berllners now live In huge concrete housing estates." "(PE0PLE CLAPPING RHYTHMICALLY)" "Thls Is one way of dealing with the problems of Isolation and alienation." "Kerrln Kopnlck's Laughter Yoga." "(SPEAKING GERMAN)" "Kerrln has ways of making you laugh." "(ALL LAUGHING)" "KERRIN: 0kay!" "(LAUGHING IN RHYTHM)" "(KERRIN SPEAKING GERMAN)" "(ALL LAUGHING)" "(LAUGHING IN RHYTHM)" "For the last 1 0 minutes of the class," "Kerrln gets us all to lie down and laugh." "Group hilarity Is not something I'd normally associate with the Germans, but this lot has no trouble." "So how long have you been coming to the classes?" "I've been laughing here since last August!" " Laughing since August?" " Yes!" " That's pretty impressive!" " Yes!" "0nly once a week!" "0nce a week?" "But do you laugh during the rest of the week a lot?" " Yes, I do, but not so long!" " Yeah!" "Not so long, that's very long!" "I think at the end, it is!" " Yes!" "Well!" " Crowded, it's a very long laughter!" "You don't often get the chance to laugh for that long!" "Nothing's that funny!" "No, I think it would be a little bit silly!" "Yes!" "Everybody would think you are a silly person!" "You'd probably be taken out and put into a police van!" "(LAUGHING) Yes!" "Here you can be a child, and the child is laughing!" " And it's helped you, has it?" " Yes, I think it helps everybody!" "Everybody likes to laugh!" "Maybe not everybody laughs, but everybody likes it!" "It's difficult to walk through Berlln without sensing ghosts of the past, from the grand hopes of socialism to the squares where the Nazls held their rallies." "But to be able to walk unhampered through the Brandenburg Gate" "Is a reality." "A reality of a Germany reunited, and hopefully a Europe reunited." "I'm leaving for my final destination aboard a DC-3, which, nearly 60 years ago, took part In one of the world's most extraordinary peace-tlme operations, the Berlln airlift." "In June 1 948, the Russlans, mistrustful of Allled Intentlons, closed off all road and rail links to the city of Berlln, with the Intention of taking control of the whole city." "For 1 1 months, Amerlcan, Brltlsh and French pilots" "Jolned together In a massive slege-bustlng operation." "Two and a half million tons of food were flown In, and at its peak, the planes were landing at Intervals no more than a minute apart." "This is one of the actual DC-3s that flew during the Berlin airlift!" "And they called them the candy bombers, or the raisin bombers, from the habit of one American pilot who would open his cockpit window and throw candy out to the kids down below as he flew over the city!" "I'm heading toward Ruegen Island, on Germany's Baltlc coast." "Here amid the sand dunes and the pine trees stands one of the more bizarre relics of the Thlrd Relch." "It's a holiday camp three miles long with 1 0,000 rooms and accommodation for 20,000 people." "Bullt here at Prora between 1 936 and 1 939," "It was Intended as a place where the good workers of Nazl Germany could build up their strength and their collective will for the great struggle that lay ahead, the conquest of Europe." "(MAN SPEAKING GERMAN)" "PALIN:" "Overseen by Hltler's favourite architect, Albert Speer, the camp at Prora was to be the embodiment of the Nazl policy of Kraft durch Freude, strength through joy." "(MAN SPEAKING GERMAN)" "Instead of housing happy holldaymakers," "Prora was filled with evacuees from bombed cities and forced labour squads brought here from Nazl-occupled Europe." "Now, as then, no one quite knows what to do with the place." "There's a museum, a few workshops, but the scale of this Nazl folly has defied even the most ambitious development plans." "So It survives, neglected, empty and useless." "Well, I've finally reached the end of my journey here on the shores of the Baltic, surrounded by the broken dreams of the last attempt to unite Europe by force!" "But now, for the first time in history, there's a real chance to create a Europe out of cooperation rather than conflict!" "And that would be a mighty achievement!" "A New Europe indeed!"