I travelled to today’s stop on our BBI Summer Tour on Berlin’s local commuter train network, the S-Bahn. You see, Strausberg is barely an hour away from my anthill on the BBI construction site!

Hardly have I arrived in Strausberg when someone taps me on the shoulder. “You’re Armin, aren’t you?” says a husky voice behind me. I turn round to find an elderly gentleman with a friendly look on his face. “Yes, I am,” I reply. “Well, there aren’t that many little blue fellas like you running around here,” he says with a laugh. And right he is, too, you can’t argue with that.

“You know how you’re always talking about your airport. Well, I thought to myself, now it’s your turn to tell little Armin all about your airport,” said the man from Strausberg in his broad Berlin accent. “Oh yes, my name’s “Yünta”, by the way.”

Then Günther begins to explain that when he was still a baby, he was actually there when Strausberg aerodrome was opened in 1927 - as a glider airfield. But before he had a chance to take off for the first time himself, Strausberg was turned into a military airbase in 1935. After the end of World War Two, the airfield was in the hands of the Soviet Air Force until 1952, after which the East German Armed Forces (NVA) used it.

“But since 1958, part of Strausberg has been open to the civilian public again,” says Günther. That’s when he began gliding. “It’s like floating,” he says, describing the sensation.

“Fascinating, eh, fella!” says Günther, more as a statement than a question, and adds that the newly opened airfield museum is well worth a visit. And before I can thank him, he’s gone as quickly as he appeared.

print version berlin-airport.de (Copyright Berliner Flughäfen)