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Farther north, in Wolfsburg, where the giant Volkswagen factory turns out 4,000 cars each working day, Mayor Werner Schlimme reels off half a dozen other examples of spontaneous East-West contacts that have occurred since the Iron Curtain lifted. "One day in November, a couple of garbage men from Klotze came over and saw one of our municipal garbage trucks at work," he says. "They thought it was wonderful how it lifted the cans and emptied them automatically." Garbage men from the two sides, separated by politics and technology but united in language, began talking trash. The West German workers, inspired, suggested to their superiors that Wolfsburg give one of its old trucks to Klotze. The city did. Observes Schlimme: "There is no better way for reunification to happen than for the people to do it instead of the governments. The revolution over there came from the people. It is they who will bring our nation together."
A similar situation occurred in the border town of Zicherie, 15 miles north of Wolfsburg. The local volunteer fire department voted to give an old rescue van to Jahrstedt, a small East German farm center just 1 1/2 miles away via a newly opened border post. But the transfer bogged down in government red tape, and the van sits idle in a garage in the West. Still, the offer led to discussions among the fire fighters. Within two weeks the fire departments met over steins of beer and plates of wurst for professional talk. At present they are working out disaster plans and communications problems.
Less formally, new friendships are sprouting, and old ones, long in forced abeyance, are being renewed. "I went to my family's old farm for the first time in 32 years," says Adolf Matthies, the former mayor of Zicherie. "It's part of a collective farm now, and I don't know anybody there anymore. But the people who lived in our old house were very kind to me. We had a meal together. I always believed that this terrible border would open and that our nation would be together again."
Near Matthies' home lies a memorial stone engraved with the words DEUTSCHLAND IST UNTEILBAR (Germany is indivisible), placed there three decades ago by a private organization. Yet Zicherie and the East German town of Bockwitz, just across the double fence, were divided for 32 years. In the old days, getting from Zicherie to Bockwitz entailed a drive of 120 miles and special permission, rarely given, to enter the border zone. Few took the trouble. On Nov. 14 East German workers cut the wire, and now hundreds of two- stroke Trabants pour across the line every day, loaded with East German shoppers headed to Wolfsburg to buy cheap clothes or tropical fruit -- or to find "gray market" jobs to pay for their purchases. And, increasingly, Volkswagens and Opels trundle in the other direction as former East Germans head back to visit friends and relatives. Polls indicate that an astounding 47 million of the 61 million West Germans plan to cross the border on visa-free visits during 1990.