Cafe That Linked East and West Germans to Close

It may seem like just another motorway service station, but for generations of Germans it was treasured as one of the few places where those from the communist east could meet those from the west.

Michendorf restaurant and petrol station on the outskirts of Berlin was where people exchanged news and sometimes presents over a cheap bite or a beer - albeit under the watchful eye of the east German secret police, the Stasi.

For west Germans it was the last place to fill up with cheap petrol before they crossed the border into the US sector of divided Berlin. For east Germans it was a chance to meet relatives from the west.

But on Monday the 70-year-old service station is to be bulldozed to make way for an eight-lane motorway. A drive-thru McDonald's will provide the refreshments. "I remember the tearful reunions between GDR citizens and their relatives from the west," said Cornelia Wirth, who worked there as a waitress for 35 years.

She also recalled the Stasi officers and, how in 1973, they confiscated seven paperback romances and three bananas from a GDR couple. "They said they were subversive wares from the west," she said. Even the toilets were searched for anti-GDR propaganda, which west German motorists were known to hide behind the cisterns and pipes.