JUAN PALACIOS: So as a funny, but actually as a political comment, a political statement, they start naming the pastries with these names. Who would they attack? The police; the army; the church: the structures of power that they were trying to take down. Hence the names. It's funny but it was more than that. It's a political statement.
MADI LANG: It really characterizes the people. Because I don't think they thought they were going to start a revolution. They were just being kind of disrespectful in a very open, normal way, like, what if instead of calling it pizza they called it "the fuck you"?
Allusionist 109. East West - transcript
ÉTIENNE ROEDER: There are some words that still exist. There are some expressions you could still tell that these people that the people come from the East or the West. For example, in the Western part, they say ‘Plastik’, and in the Eastern part, I would say they say ‘Plaste’ because there was a company in the East - there was actually just one company in the East that produced plastics and that was called Plaste und Elaste, and because of that, all the people would call plastics ‘Plaste’. And you you could still tell today if someone says ‘Plaste’ and instead of ‘Plastik’ that this person is probably from the Eastern part.
ESTHER-MIRIAM WAGNER: ‘Plastetüte’ - plastic bag. I mean I remember going to school with a plastic bag and being sent home because it was a West German bag. This was a very precious item - you would keep a ‘Plastetüte’ for months and you would reuse it and reuse it and reuse it until it was just tatters. That was a precious object.
MATTHIAS EINHOFF: My son, when he tries to identify if someone is coming from a West German or East German family, he asks them how they call the thing that you put your bathroom things in: East Germans say ‘Waschtasche’ and West Germans say ‘Kulturbeutel’. And that’s the ultimate identifier whether you come from a East or West German family.
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