Letters To America From Communist East Germany

Dana was a native of Frankfurt (Oder) and a college student in East Berlin in the mid and late 1980s. She answered a letter that I wrote to Bulgaria Today magazine, which was located in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1984. Dana is somewhat younger than I am. She often wrote to me while traveling on a train from her home in Frankfurt (Oder) to her university in East Berlin. Her letters are a thing of the past, and not just because there is no longer a Cold War between the United States, the former U.S.S.R., and the Soviet satellite countries in Europe. Specifically, letter writing as Dana and I wrote to one another is something that is seldom done today. People most often interact through e-mail, which to my mind is very generic, stale, and impersonal. Usually twice a month I received correspondence, i.e. letters, postcards, photos, etc. from Dana. Her letters are intriguing, vibrant, and written from the heart. Many of them are six pages and more in length. Once I sent Dana a pair of jeans, a consumer good that was hard to find in East Germany, and elsewhere in the eastern bloc of nations. She mentions depending on them in one of the letters I have included in my e-book. When she received them, they were nearly her size. Only a bit of alteration was needed for a good fit.