This is how it really was, the East. Experience an unadulterated piece of everyday life in the GDR in this book. Author Roland Pöschel, the daring little rascal, takes us on a journey through his youth in East Germany. Unvarnished, absolutely authentic, and highly entertaining. Jokes, pranks, and seemingly small disasters from the years between 1958 and 1974 are recounted from the perspective of a small child and adolescent in the so-called first German "workers' and farmers' state." From bathing in the outhouse, the evening Sandman, to the first cigarette and childhood gang wars, this book leaves nothing out. No historian can tell how life in the GDR really was. Only the "Ossis" themselves can do that. And Roland Pöschel is one of them - and what a one. The Mecklenburger, born in Altentreptow and raised in the village of Luplow, takes us back to his youth. The big politics are kept at bay, but often lurk between the lines, as everything is somehow interconnected and yet very different from how it is mostly told today. Some readers may afterwards ask: Oh, so that’s how it was. And the Ossi who experienced it will say: Yes, that’s how it was - just like that and not any other way.