Vanishing Borders

Michael Farr presents his impresssions of East Germany before, during and after its dazzling revolution. A foreign correspondent in Germany for the past ten years, he has witnessed and reported the rigid hand of communism in the East and its overthrow, the joy of the Wall coming down and the festivities surrounding German unification 11 months later. He visits Guestrow with Schmidt, Dresden with Kohl and Colditz castle with a boisterous party of ex-prisoners of war. But the history of Germany is also Europe's, and none has been more affected than neighbouring Poland and Bohemia. Farr travels by bicycle through the once formidable Iron Curtain to Czecholslovakia and explores the faded elegance of the Bohemian spas. From Prague, the "Golden City", he moves via Warsaw to Gdansk and Poland's Baltic riviera. It is a journey of discovery, of uncovering a rich cultural past which communist rule had made inaccessible for too long.