During my time on the trains (69-71) there had been a crackdown on trinket trading. Ditto on the British train. On the French train, however, it was open season. It was a different story on the Autobahn. Unlike our army, the Soviet Army did not charge for replacement or supplementary ribbons, belt buckles, etc., so there were a lot of things available.
There was a Soviet lieutenant at the Marienborn rail checkpoint who was an officer because he was a sports star, rather than due to any signs of bright thinking. (He used to sleep right up till the time our train came in, so did not come across as being very competent.) On one of my OJT Interpreter trips he slyly told us that he’d heard that in West Berlin one could buy an item that interested him. I thought, uh-o, he’s going to ask for some banned “anti-Soviet” literature. Nope, he had heard about a ball point pen that had an image of a girl in a bathing suit in a clear liquid. When one tipped it to the other direction, the bathing suit slipped off.
It was hard to keep from laughing. I told him that I was too new in Berlin to know where to buy such a thing. (Actually, I figured that it would not be difficult to find, but I didn’t want to encourage him.) Back in Service Company, my roommate was one of the heavy-haul truck drivers trained to drive the Autobahn. I told him this story and he asked me for the lieutenant’s name, thought my description of him sounded familiar. A week or two later he showed me the sparkling new Soviet Army belt buckle that he had traded the lieutenant for the sought-after sample of Western decadence.
— rwr
-- rwr