14 days after the Wende, we decided to travel to the West too and pick up our Begrüßungsgeld (welcome money) like everyone else. We decided to drive from Dresden to Hof, because we believed the crowds would be too big at the pay-out stations in Berlin. We went across the border with no problems, my husband and I and our two-month-old in our Wartburg Kombi, and we received our money in Hof without having to queue, so we had some time left at the end. So we spontaneously thought about paying my relatives in Göttingen a surprise visit. We had an old East German atlas with us and came to the conclusion that Göttingen was not too far away from Hof. During the trip we noticed we had grossly miscalculated. So all of our newly acquired Begrüßungsgeld (welcome money) was soon spent on petrol. We also had to buy some oil at the petrol station, because we had a two-stroke engine. The attendant wanted to pour the oil in the engine at the front and we had to explain to him that it should be added to the petrol in the tank. To top it off, part of the exhaust fell off on the final stretch not far from Göttingen, so we arrived at my cousin’s house in Nikolausberg near Göttingen amid loud clattering. The surprise was a success and we spent the night there and went back home the next day. As a present for the rest of the family in Dresden, my cousin gave us a large range of yoghurt. What was available as yogurt in East Germany really did not deserve that name – it was more of a jiggling lump. And so we arrived back home in Dresden one day later, without our Begrüßungsgeld (welcome money), which we had converted into petrol, but with a lot of yogurt instead.
»What was available as yogurt in East Germany really did not deserve that name - it was more of a jiggling lump.«