Police inspected gas tanks, cut cakes in half to see what was inside, dumped coffee beans from sacks, looked under cars with mirrors and, at one point, used a heat sensor to estimate the number of bodies inside the car, comparing that count to the heads the guards could see. Vehicles had been modified to create secret compartments to smuggle people through the border.

BEHIND THE LINES

In November 1989, I joined West German residents who lived near the old East German border in central Germany as they streamed through new holes in border fences to find neighbors and villages they had not visited in decades. East Germany 20 years ago looked as if someone had turned off the color television set and fired up an old black-and- white model.

My ride on an old East German bus, into the countryside from the border, was like a time machine, taking me backward several decades to a postwar land of shabby buildings and dour inhabitants. Farms and houses were gray, covered with soot from coal used as heating fuel.

In many villages, shop windows were empty. I walked into an empty restaurant where each table held a ''Reserved'' sign. I was told later that the restaurant put up the signs because it had no food to sell and didn't want to admit it.

Twenty years later, color is as plentiful in eastern Germany as in western Germany. House painters put the grays away. Shops and restaurants are full. Except for some remaining Soviet-style drab apartment buildings, you wouldn't know West from East, externally, though eastern Germany's economy still lags behind western Germany.

Behind old enemy lines, people have stories to tell. Delightful cities of music and religious history, such as Eisenach and Leipzig, offer also a journey through the old East German world of hidden bunkers, secret police and a life so fearful that citizens didn't dare let their children talk at school about family time at home for fear of violating a government taboo, such as watching television shows beamed from the West.

Gerhard Schneider, mayor of Eisenach in 1990 during reunification, says his toughest job was explaining to East Germans that their new freedoms meant new responsibilities. Food had always been cheap, but prices rose quickly.

''They didn't like it,'' he says, and they turned to the government to keep prices low. ``I had to tell them they were now responsible for their own lives.''

The museum at Point Alpha, worth a stop for Cold War enthusiasts, is south of Eisenach, about 30 miles, near the small town of Geisa. This spot is along the old border that military theorists believed could be a flash point for World War III because geography made it accessible to armies on both sides of the Cold War.

Both sides stationed troops at Point Alpha. U.S. troops stood guard from 1946 to 1990. Museums are set up on both sides of the old border. If you do not speak German, start your tour at the museum on the west side, where exhibits are labeled in English and German. You'll see a guard tower, barracks and explanations of life at the edge.

STASI MUSEUM

Residents of the city of Leipzig are proud of its museum dedicated to the horrors of the East German secret police, the Stasi. The Stasi Museum is operated by a community group that works to save records and keep the past alive, making certain that nothing from the secret days is hidden from the public.

During the past 20 years, people have found out that spouses spied on them for the Stasi; parents have discovered their children kept tabs on their anti-government feelings, and that neighbors sneaked peeks when window shades were not drawn, when, perhaps, residents were watching television shows from the West.

Visitors can see how mail was intercepted and envelopes steamed open, their contents read, then resealed and placed back in the mail. The Stasi could look at 1,500 to 2,000 letters a day, concentrating on those coming from and going to Western countries.

Some letters and postcards were confiscated. The Stasi also recorded telephone conversations.

Museum workers found lists of the city's ''unofficial collaborators'' who reported suspicious activities by citizens. Bigger, but less revealing, is 15 tons of wads of paper, a product of East German paper shredders that destroyed files in the waning days of 1989. Museum workers estimate that the paper wads are the result of more than 100 miles of personal files.

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