Checkpoint Charlie Museum

When I was 11 or 12 I lived in Berlin. One of the highlights was visiting the Checkpoint Charlie Museum.

There was a rich guy, an East Berliner with a Porsche, who dreamed of going to the West (Of course! He was rich!). The Berlin Wall had been constructed, but there was a gate, which the important people passed through. The rich guy looked at the gate, which was guarded by a horizontal steel barrier and some Soviet/East German soldiers. The steel barrier was a post, lifted up and down when the important people passed through it. The rich guy measured the height of the horizontal post and realized that his Porsche, if he removed the roof and the windshield, was lower than the steel post. So he removed the roof and the windshield from his Porsche.

Then, bravely, he got into the driver's seat, stepped on the pedal, ducked his head and at full speed drove under the post. The soldiers shot into his car (like Sondhi's) but he made it!

In the end, he lived the life of luxury, and decadence, of West Berlin, and his car, full of bullet holes, was exhibited at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, to thrill children like me.

After that, the Soviets added dangling steel strips to their posts, to prevent this sort of escape.

But that guy was a genius: while everybody else was trying to figure out how to get OVER the wall, he thought of a way to get UNDER it!