berlinblogger | 
01 23rd, 2013| 
Berlin is a city that constantly invents itself, but never forgets its past. Since 2005 there is a museum dedicated to review the time when Germany was divided. The time of the GDR, the German Democratic Republic. This museum aims to show how people lived in communist Berlin. A dark age full of separations but in the end the families lived in a way quite similar to those of other families on the planet.
The German capital is a city full of museums for very different audiences, many of these are located in the area known as the Museum Island. Not far from the Cathedral of Berlin we find this interactive museum dedicated to the RDA.
Unlike other museums, this is designed for visitors to interact with the exhibits and thus get closer to the life and peculiarities of the time. Encouraging the viewer that is immersed in those times and plays with the ¡objects of the time, in fact visitor participation is key to soak up what the museum wants to transmit.
In this museum we can sit in a real Trabbi car (the most popular car of the time), leaving the engine running.
We can also discover how were the houses of that time, go their bathrooms, bedrooms, open drawers and cupboards and find out what medicines and cosmetics were used, what clothes they wore. Go through the kitchen and smell the spices that were used for cooking. Sitting on the sofa in the dining room and watch a game between the GDR and the FGR or dance to the socialist dance “Lipsi”.
But aside from knowing the everyday moments we can relive those other scenes that were not so nice, as the holding cells or Stasi interrogation spaces . Or sit in an office of a party chief.
This is an interactive vivid entertainment museum but that pretends to show the story with scientific rigor revealing aspects not only of the political side but of the everyday life, which is perhaps what allows us to understand better that historical time .
The museum contains around 150,000 objects, some of these are available tonline.
It is open every day from 10 to 20 hours and also on Saturdays until 22h.
Keep in mind this is a small place and fills up quickly with people, so if you are spending the day at the Museum Island we recommend that you go first to this place.
The price is 6 euros per adult, 4 for students or having the Berlin WelcomeCard.
Then we can stay and eat in the museum restaurant serving specialties of the GDR.
It is located on Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 1. And we can go with the following bus lines, 100, 200, 248 and M48. We can also arrive by train and get off at Hackeschermarkt. They lines S5, S7, S9 and S75.
Ara
Rent nice apartments in Berlin city and be sure to visit this museum and learn how it was to live in the era of East Berlin.
