Why did East Germany place storage buildings on the A4 between Bautzen and Weissenberg?

[bothar]

I have some distant family on my Polish side who moved from Warsaw into a villa in Wroclaw that had been vacated by a German family. The German family left most of their possessions that could not easily be taken with them, which included an impressive German piano that they still have.

I wonder how were these properties allocated? A villa with a piano and furniture etc would be preferable to some place damaged in the war where the owners wrecked anything that was left.

I have Norman Davies' book about the history of Wrocław, but have not got around to reading it, too much time spent on Internet forums. I had visited there 40 years ago and will return soon for a visit. It is striking to think that my visit then was closer to the war than to today.

[Vierwielen]

Back to roads, and the truth is there weren’t that many good roads in the east. Statistics record there were 1400kms of Autobahn in 1965 - however 20 years later this had only risen by 400kms.

In 1984 there were just 12kms of D3 motorway, and a staggering 117kms of D1 motorway. That’s a truly awful figure, even by eastern standards. It makes one ask why those roads needed to be motorway at all, although I can imagine there being extenuating circumstances (such as (very) long-term defects and outstanding repairs).

Meanwhile, there were around 34 000 kms of trunk roads. However, speed limits were not good - on these roads the limit was just 80km/h (it had previously been 90km/h). The journey from Hamburg to Berlin (before the A24 was built) was said to take 5 hours, inclusive of border checks.

A small point of pedantry - one writes "117 km", not "117 kms". The rationale is that "km" is an internationally recognised symbol and the use of an "s" to convert a singular noun into a plural does not apply to all languages. In German, "kilometer" is both singular and plural while the Italians add an "i" instead of an "s" to convert from singualr to plural. The French and Spanish however use "s".

[Chris Bertram]

Not only that, but as Italian doesn't use the letter K, the word in that language is chilometro. Notwithstanding that, the symbol is km in accordance with international standards.