In the early 80s, when I was a kid and we were still living in the days of "Cold War" there were legends about the USSR and the communist block :

"There is a whole another USSR below ground. They've built it just in case if the nuclear war destroys all of the world, they will survive even being more powerful."

"Russians have three times (goes to even ten times) nuclear weapons than they declare. They hide it on the dark side of the moon."

We all believed those hypes.

In Turkey, being a geographical neighbor of USSR puts you in a position that nothing was ever unbelievable.

Yugoslavia

In 1980s, Eurovision Song Contest was on the top of our favorite annual events. From months before, our only television channel TRT began to talk about that years candidate singers and song. After the Turkish finals, there were rumors everywhere if the song was appropriate or nor.

When the most anticipated night arrived, we as a nation were all seated in front of television and hoped for the best. But generally we ended up getting a total of 14 points or 8 or even zero.

Yugoslavia was one of the countries that we envied. They had beautiful songs, beautiful girls and they generally ended up within the first three. I remember they had won the contest twice and they have more victories before.

Yugoslavia was a communist country, but was not exactly among iron curtain countries. They were in between.

We knew that they were once a part of Ottoman Empire, but now they were winning the Eurovision. They were richer than us and they were apparently happier than us. In our national football league, there were dozens of Yugoslavian players and coaches, and they were damn good.

This is why we envied them. And also I was very upset when this country dissolved in late 20th century. I'll miss Yugoslavia.

East Germany - Retro State of my Childhood

In my father's homeland Devrek, in a village in Black Sea region; lots of people had long immigrated to Germany (West Germany at those times) and they were occasionally having holidays in their village. When we were talking with some of them in the cafenio of the village, I asked this question :

"Why do they always go to West Germany for working, not East Germany instead?"

They stared at me for a while and started to laugh loudly. One of them said, "But boy, they are communists". As an obedient child, I nodded as I understood, but silently I said to myself : "So what?"

On the atlas, East Germany looked like just like another normal country. Just like West Germany, smaller than that. But greater than Holland and Belgium. They won lots of gold medals in Olympiads. Their football teams were not bad, especially Locomotive Leipzig.

I still can't believe my childhood's retro state East Germany and all memories of it evaporated within a couple of years. Does anyone remember East Germany nowadays?