Some Memories of Germany, Photos & Materials, Part 6A

These are some pictures and materials I have from various trips to Germany in the 1980s. When applicable to previous articles I've done, I have supplied the link to that article. To keep these manageable, I'm going to do this in two parts, which I'm labeling "6A" and "6B."

 This is one of the "transit visas" I had to purchase to travel through East Germany. (Front). I did another article about Berlin:  http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2010/01/berlin-before-wall-tumbled.html

 This is the other side of the travel visa, showing I'm from the "USA" and with the validation stamp of the "DDR" (Deutsche Demokratische Republik," German Democratic Republic, the official name of East Germany). For some information about my Berlin trip, see:  http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2014/12/some-memories-of-germany.html

 This was a folding card showing my room number at the "Hotel zur Alten Post" in Hamburg.

 The front of a brochure for the Hotel zur Alten Post, with the bottom bold print saying, "Hearty Welcome To Hamburg"

 Some of the inside of the hotel brochure.

 This is a sugar packet from the "Wienerwald" Restaurant in Frankfurt (now closed)

 This is a sugar packet from the "Dippegucker Restaurant" in Frankfurt, which had two locations. I may be a sugar thief, but I'm a "sweet" sugar thief.

 This is a business card for the hotel (Springmann) where I stayed in Berlin. The man who booked the room for me underlined the address. For some info on "Bleibtreustrasse," see: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-street-in-berlin.html

 

 This is a 10 Mark note. The Mark is no longer in use, as Germany now uses the Euro. The Mark's value as compared to American money varied according to the exchange rate on any given day. Back in part of the 1980s, the American dollar was pretty strong, making it cheaper for Americans to travel to Germany, which was really a major thing back in those times, as we had tens of thousands of military personnel stationed in (West) Germany, plus thousands more in support personnel, and many military personnel had family members actually live in Germany to be close to them. While all of this sounds good, one of the downsides to the strong dollar was that American exports TO Germany became much more expensive for people in Germany to buy, thus hurting American businesses trying to sell products in Germany, and it made travel from Germany to the U.S. more expensive, thus hurting the American tourist business.  

 A five Mark coin, a 2 Mark coin, and then a 1 Mark coin and a 5 Pfennig coin.

The other side of the same coins. Again, none of this money is in use anymore.

WORD HISTORY:
Tide-This word, related to "time," goes back to Indo European "di/da," which had the notion of "divide, separate into pieces." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "tidiz," meaning "period of time." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "tid" (long "i"), meaning "period of time, season, feast or festival time/hour," and later, "religious hour, time of prayer." "Christmastide" still shows the word with one of its original meanings. The word later became "tide," but the ending "e" was pronounced as "eh/ah," as this was before the final "e" was used to show that the interior vowel was long. In the 1300s, the word came to be used for "rising and falling of the seas," a meaning which seems to have come from close relative Low German "tit/getide," later "Tide," which meant "time," but also had the "rise and fall of the the seas" meaning, a meaning also passed onto High German. The other Germanic languages have forms, but most mean "time," although some additional forms mean "tide:" German has "Zeit" (time), but also "Gezeiten" ("tide," originally just "Gezeit"), Low German Saxon has "Tied" (tide) and "Tiet" (time), Dutch has "tijd" (time) and "tij" (tide), West Frisian has "tiid" (time), Danish and Norwegian have "tid" (meaning period of time, but they also have "time," pronounced "tee-ma," meaning "hour"), Icelandic has "tið" (tið=tith, seemingly now little used, meaning "period of time"), Swedish has "tid" (period of time).