Abstract
Reflecting on debates concerning the influx of Eastern Bloc travellers, refugees, and immigrants to East Germany in 1990, this contribution details the development and the legacy of the so-called “borders of friendship”, an open border project in the 1970s and 1980s between Eastern Bloc countries, which allowed citizens to travel without visa or passport. As early as 1972, tens of millions of citizens from Poland, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia were travelling to neighbouring countries, either in a genuine attempt to foster “friendship” between nations, but usually in order to pursue unorthodox pleasures. Contrary to commonplace views of life behind the “Iron Curtain”, travel was more liberal before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when changes precipitated by the sudden collapse of state socialism led to a rapid shift in both the discourse concerning and the practice of travel across Europe.
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