West Germany’s network videotex system, Bildschirmtext, was largely used for payment services by the Deutsche Bank, while its system was supported by hardware from the UK as West Germany continued to liberalise its society and economy. However its liberal use and basic encryption caused a few issues, irking Europe’s biggest hacking community Chaos Computer Club, sparking off it’s world-wide fame via the BTX-Hack. The girls talk about the anarchist attitudes in 80s divided Germany, the post-WW2 political and economic splitting that created this videotex system, and reminisce about the nostalgic aesthetics of Deutsche Telekom.
Follow us on Twitter @OurFriendComp
And Instagram @ourfriendthecomputer
Main research for the episode was done by Ana, who also audio edited.
Music by Nelson Guay (SoundCloud: fluxlinkages)
West Germany’s network videotex system, Bildschirmtext, was largely used for payment services by the Deutsche Bank, while its system was supported by hardware from the UK as West Germany continued to liberalise its society and economy. However its liberal use and basic encryption caused a few issues, irking Europe’s biggest hacking community Chaos Computer Club, sparking off it’s world-wide fame via the BTX-Hack. The girls talk about the anarchist attitudes in 80s divided Germany, the post-WW2 political and economic splitting that created this videotex system, and reminisce about the nostalgic aesthetics of Deutsche Telekom.
Follow us on Twitter @OurFriendComp
And Instagram @ourfriendthecomputer
Main research for the episode was done by Ana, who also audio edited.
Music by Nelson Guay (SoundCloud: fluxlinkages)
Hello. Welcome to our friend the computer, we're a computer history podcast. I'm Camila. I'm a artist, writer, researcher. And I'm here with Ana. Mm. In real life in London. Normally, we do this across the seas, but we are both in London. We're actually in the same house. And we. We tried to record this in the same room. It couldn't work out. So we're currently sitting in different versions of the same house. Yeah, that's. That's how Luddite we are with our technology. Is that we couldn't figure out how to record with two mikes in the same room. So we had to separate. Which is sad. Sad. But it does feel more natural to be looking at you and saying, Oh, that would be so much more fun to like, do it in the same room, but maybe a different vibes would be really different. When we did the test recording, we were like, This feels weird when we are in the same room and felt like felt wrong. But now we're back to normal. So it's ok we're like pretending to be URL, but we're actually IRL. We're across the hall. Yeah. I've been on so many calls recently where it's like three people in one room with like two people on the screen and we're just trying to figure out how to make it work. The worst part of that is that the people on the screen are usually projected Really really large Yeah. On the wall I'm in like a video art crit group in New York and it's really it's really great. And there's some amazing artists in it. And we meet up once a month and in like a studios screening space and somebody or two people will will show their work and then we talk about it. But I couldn't attend the last one because I had a like a COVID exposure and I didn't get COVID, but it was like I was just being careful that that my friend Erica, like, cradled me in her arms, like in a laptop screen. Oh my god. Like a laptop baby. Yeah, She would, like, turn me to look at people, but I didn't know if I could be heard. And so I kept texting her and being like, Can you just say this? And then she'd be like, Camila says this. I felt like I was. Yeah. I don't know. Existing that through. Through her. Yeah. It's so awkward when you have to exist As like a severed head in a space. When I saw you, we were like, at a café at the British Museum. And there was something about because it's so, like, white in more ways than one. And you were sitting, like, at a desk in the cafe table in the café, and then you were sort of framed. And then I just felt like I was looking at a screen. Yeah. When we met for the first time in real life, we yeah, we were like, sitting opposite to each other. And it did kind of feel like I was just looking at a screen, but it was slightly more 3D because you're right, the way that it was lit, like the British Museum has this huge kind of windowed roof. So the lighting was incredible and it definitely felt like some kind of studio setup. Yeah. So now we're going to do a podcast episode. I feel kind of a little like, not quite right. Everything feels a little off, but yeah, we'll see how today goes. Yeah, this is quite an exciting episode because it's about Belgium text and I'm half German and I speak the language and I visit my extended family in Germany quite often, so I know it's common knowledge, but I never get tired of the fact that Germans love a word amalgamation. And I used to see it everywhere. I even see it in the public world when I walk through Germany like cafes will be an amalgamation or like by trees and things like that. And yeah, they just love Mentos. I think that's the word, which is like the merging words together to form one new word and you get words that are sometimes at least 30 characters long, which is crazy. But I guess when you're saying the word, it doesn't feel like like for me, I don't speak like three words of German. So, you know, every word sounds just like a sound, you know. But yeah, I guess if you if you know German, you would understand the components. Yeah. Of the language. So even though it's really long, it wouldn't to me it's like, Whoa. Yeah. It's still part of a sentence. Yeah. And sentences are also the merging of words. They all sound like one big word if you're speaking in a different language. But a great example of portmanteau is, is Belgium text, which translates to scream text. But this word has two layers of compound words, actually. So the first instance of that is Belgium, which means screen. But the direct translation of that is also emerged. Word of the word bilt meaning image and shim, which means umbrella. I actually looked it up and I went into Google Translate and I just typed in Shem without detecting, without saying what language it is. But I wanted the robot. Yeah. So yeah. And shim actually means screen in Dutch. Oh yeah. Shim can also mean screen in German, but it's more rare. But yeah, I thought that this was quite a cute kind of definition of screen, which kind of means umbrella. An umbrella means kind of a shield. Yeah. So anyway, I thought this was quite a cute definition of screen, which means the image means umbrella. An umbrella is kind of seen as like a shield. I guess Screen can also be. Doesn't have to mean like a computer screen. Yeah, because other work like screen can also be. Yeah, like a shield, but it's sort of interesting looking at this portmanteau thing because I think it was last episode we were talking about how like, you know, all of these are video tech systems that they all had to have that are in unique name, teletext and video text amalgamations or compound words. And usually they they were sort of like a play on telly or video and then like text text or something like that. But this is, this is a little more creative. I like this one. Yeah, it's pretty much a complete translation, a complete adaptation to German, whereas you would have. Yeah. Like you said, in other countries they would just take the English word and then just add like an O to the end of it to like, make it sound more Spanish or Portuguese or Portuguese. I So yeah, so Belgium text was an online video tech system launched in West Germany in 1983 and similar to Presto in the UK, it was developed by the National Postal Service. And it's quite ironic because although Belgium text was a portmanteau so intentionally kind of amalgamated, it was later shortened and abbreviated to Btecs kind of sounds like a cryptocurrency now, and I guess because it was just too long of a word to use when it was Btecs is was it pronounced BTEC? So is it pronounced like how those letters would be said in German Btecs would be said in German like that. They two X, which is basically the same letter X. That's great. It's basically the same. Yeah. Which is quite handy here. And in 1949, Germany formally split into two independent nations, which was the Federal Republic of Germany, the FDR or West Germany, which was kind of allied to the Western democracies next to the German Democratic Republic, which is GDR or East Germany, which was allied to the Soviet Union. And this continued until 1990 when the two sides sides merged, represented and kind of trumpeted by the famous fall of the Berlin Wall. What I mean, you know, I know a bit about this history, but were they actually completely separate? They were separate countries. Yeah. That was in my head. I thought that that was that. It was just kind of like divided and I never really considered what that meant in terms of like governing. And so, so even when you would have if you would ever have people traveling from one side to the other, you would go through these checks and you would go check your passport. And actually the checks were even more intense then than traveling to any other European country. It's just funny because like, yeah, I know all of that. I just hadn't clicked in my head, I guess, because I was born just as the wall fell. So I guess, yeah, it just hadn't clicked for me that they were actually completely separate countries. Yeah, but I mean, it is quite weird because before then West Germany was kind of entrenched with the Western heralding of progress invested into developing technology, and they launched Belgium text, which collated data through the telephone network and then displayed the content on a television set which was very similar to Presto and it also drew inspiration from many tell in France by including some of the features in its display. So well. So unlike minutes. So it wasn't so much like terminal terminally access terminal access. It was like more through like an adapter and then the TV set. Okay. And then also, I mean, last that last episode when we looked at kept and we also were kind of looking at the way that Europe, I guess, divide it up all these different video text protocols. And I did notice last last episode that Belgium text had its own protocol. Yeah. So did they develop like it was inspired by Presto and Mini Tell Tale Hotel, but it was its own like completely separate development. No. So they use c one, but cpt1 was vtech, c P2 I think was presto, cp3 was minotaur oh four Well it was using c p p, which was the Central European, but they had different protocols like one was ATX, but they weren't compatible. So like Minotaur was I think number three, CBT was like the Central European whatever. But then they, but they were the ones that worked out like, oh, these are the four or five like different types. And you can if you're starting a new one, you should pick one of these to go with. But they weren't compatible between each other I think. Yeah. Yeah that's, that's, that's interesting as well because like in this case you would have a different protocol, but some of the hardware is the same and I guess that is very representative of like trade and technology where you trade some of the hardware, but then you create your own software because of either language variations or you just like culturally and socially, you have different aims, which is quite interesting. Yeah, I think like the language thing is quite interesting. Yeah, but then the hardware you can, you can basically just like swap that around. Yeah. Yeah. Which is good because the later I think you know, larger companies like IBM and stuff, they would they like made their own, they made terminals and things for video techs. Yeah and I guess they could be used across a variety of countries. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah I mean normally gc4 thousand and computers were used to do this, which was like a hardware requirement which were commonly used in the UK as well. And they actually had to be bought or rented from the Brits. So, so you can kind of see the, like again, the political amalgamation here of the citizenship of the technology that was being built in West Germany at the time. So a lot of it was British influence, the hardware and I think we've you know, found this quite often in our research for this for the podcast is that the development of kind of state technology always had a political agenda and in this case the West was kind of trying to establish itself with it through trade and relationships with other states. And it would largely define what they mean as a nation or what they stand for. What who are their friends, who are their allies, what powers they kind of represent. And so a lot of these technology hardware relationships was like a collaboration with kind of strings attached. Do you know if it was West Germany was they were the ones that were kind of wanting to build a video tech service, or do you think maybe it was like a discussion in the European countries? Yeah, I think it was probably instigated by the Germans because they it was a great opportunity for like an economic investment, more like an economic liberation to make friends with with the UK and European Union and East Germany had a kind of very clear narrative or trade mark on the on the opposite side of the spectrum is that they very much represented the East and the Soviets. So the brand was pretty obvious, but West Germany was still kind of finding its feet with what they symbolized and who they rubbed shoulders with specifically. Also just kind of coming out of like being a fascist state and a Nazi state. And Germany had a very kind of strong identity crisis after World War Two. Its economy and reputation is completely shattered by the Nazi regime, and trading with the West required kind of like a thoroughly like new sound development or trust. And before West Germany could play with France and the UK in tech development, they had to rely on hardware developed within the nation and actually used a lot of technology from East Germany. So this was like before they got before they could like buy or rent stuff from the UK. Yeah, right. Yeah. And I stumbled upon this kind of famous picture. Yeah. You sent rounds on Twitter? Yeah. Of women in uniformed overalls pulling these carts of their little computers behind them during a socialist computer parade in East Berlin in 1907. It was like I thought it was a parade that was just like various things, that the whole parade was a computer parade. Oh, no. I think this was just like the computer section of the parade. Oh, yeah. So it's like it was like we should Maybe that's something we should do to get a parade. Yeah, No, I think it's just like a nation parade of, like, here's what we did as a state. And these computers were, I think p c 1715 built with GDR technology, and there's a CPU called the U. 880, which is a Z 80 clone. This is what I read in the comments, but also some West German and Soviet Union chips were running on operating system called C.P. So what was common at the time in the eighties was that the Soviets made a lot of the hardware in their factories and sold or traded them with the West, who would then make their own digital encoding to run experiments and develop projects like in text. Guy So what was the, do you know, like what the kind of trade relationship was like between East and West Germany? Like around this time? Yeah. So it started off as absolutely no trade. There were embargoes and there were bans on trade. But towards the eighties I mean, so, so it all fell down. And in the nineties and in the eighties especially, you know, mid to late eighties, things were starting to be a little bit lawless and there was some illegal activity in terms of trade. The east was just falling apart. So there was a little bit more like liberal trade and the relationship was a little bit more liberal in the eighties. But yeah, I mean, purchases in the east of higher technologies from the west were under various embargoes, which then became a little bit more liberated over time. And with also the gradual waning of like Soviet power In the late 1980s, the Communist Party in East Germany began to lose its grip on power and actually, you know, tens of thousands of East Germans began to flee the nation. And by the late by late 1989, the Berlin Wall started to come down. The Soviets were set on producing their own tech. But the main chips that were produced in the GDR were more expensive in production than its Japanese or American counterparts. Because of these, you know, very strict trading policies. And some parts were imported from the West with high currency exchange rates from the from West Germany. Yeah, from exactly. And were sometimes traded illegally kind of circumventing these tech embargoes bans on trade between the COCOM, which is the economic organization between the two countries of the Eastern bloc. So the kind of like illegal trading was would that have been from independent actors within the government? Yeah, it must have all just been independent people and I actually told my German friend about this. We had a conversation about the technology that she was growing up with because she grew up in East Germany. I mean, this was after the wall fell down, but there's still some remnants of that culturally and economically. And she said that, you know, of course, even playing on old computers when she was growing up in late nineties, Germany, you could easily distinguish like Soviet keyboards to more Western ones. Did she say why or how? I don't know. I think she has a very good understanding of like Soviet esthetic. I'm like, compared to different fonts. Yeah, different forms and yeah, I don't know, maybe she was just, just chatting ship them. But I think I think also maybe she related like nostalgic old pieces of tech to Eastern tech, which is not necessarily true, but it's interesting to think about like the, the esthetics of the tech that we use, the computers and things like that, like how we got to the point where we're at now. Like I'm looking at my Apple keyboard and, you know, like everything's built on what came before, but there were other tech worlds that didn't necessarily get to the point that we're at now that had a different esthetic esthetic for our computers. It's interesting to think about how we related also to socialist projects and the the esthetic of socialism, because if we even look at like Minato or the Syverson Ops room or OG. Yes. Yeah. We make a very quick conclusion to think that just because something looks socialist, it's it's because it looks old, especially when we're thinking about tech. Yeah. And I guess there's like different eras of tech esthetics, even like, you know, the twins like, clear see through Macintoshes and the that I really associate with like a sudden cultural era that very much it's like very much connected to the United States and yeah, and the invention of transparent design as well, which was more of like an interface design choice, but that was invented in the States for Apple. And I think very much like represents the idea of neoliberalism. But we can get into that on a different Yeah, I mean yeah, so I have haven't I was thinking the other day about how like I miss being able to look inside as like an esthetic of computers, like I had a computer, like a PC growing up. And I'm pretty sure at least one iteration of it had like a clear side to the tower and it had like rainbow lights inside. So you could like see inside of those like a fan and stuff like that. And I remember thinking it was the coolest. Oh, that is so cool. You have to look inside. But now everything's like closed off and Apple have their own, like proprietary screws, you know, things like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Like the actual dismantling of it is very impenetrable. Mm hmm. Like light up shoes, but like a light up. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Is that the same vibe? Yeah. But I also want to say that, you know, Belgium texts was so kind of of its time, not just via the political history, but also. Yeah, it's its esthetic and we always relate the 32 bit imagery to the eighties and Belgium text has a lot to do with that. Is that is it video text or is it Belgian text specifically I guess is video text. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. It used the standard video text profile called CP T, which displays graphics by a 480, I think by 250 pixel resolution where there is only 32 colors kind of could be shown at the same time out of a palette of about 4000 and Oh yeah, and I wonder what these like 4000 colors were and how they have translated to our understanding of what the eighties looked like because 4000 is still not really that many. Like, that's quite a pixelated color wheel. I feel like these 4000 colors that they chose I think is kind of established. Our idea of like eighties products and eighties tech and maybe that's how eighties are still visualized in movies and culture. I'm also thinking about like the era when gradients were really in and I'm like, well, maybe that's because suddenly we had like a jump in. Yeah, in the amount of pixels that. Yeah. And so suddenly you could have like a smooth gradient. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Because all of this, all of this information about what we have of the past is translated through screens, it's translated through movies, TV shows and games. Yeah, there's just something quite interesting about what colors were used and how that was then translated over time, through screens and through the choice of how many pixels were allowed to use. Yeah. And like how that affects other things like fashion, makeup and all the, all the sort of cultural indicators, cultural things that going on at the time. Yeah. So boutiques had been made obsolete by the Internet at the end of 2001. It was still running until that time. It's kind of I know before it was shut down by Deutsche Telekom, which is German T Mobile and Telecom is spelled with a K. Yeah, I love it. I know it's yeah, it was done by them, even though it formed the basis of the Deutsche Telekom online service, which maintained a BT interface even after 1995 when the brand was first introduced. So actually the interface was pretty old school. And this is crazy to me because my first ever phone was a T mobile phone. Is this in Germany? Oh, it's in Czech Republic, Yeah. So close by they would have used the same stuff. And I remember it was like a blue squarish flip phone with a little antenna and a dark green background with massive pixels pop probably 32 bit. Now that I think about it, and it could only display green and black and it had the snake game on it. I miss the snake. R.I.P. Snake game Snake. I love this V so many light game apps that are doing game, but it's not the static snake. It's not the same. It's going to be like on your phone. You have to be on the panel. I can still. My mom had snake on a phone before I had a phone and it was like a Nokia. Yeah, it was like not the flip phone is like before the flip phone. And I remember the buttons being these like rubbery and the fear I have. Like I really remember like the feeling of, like pressing down on the buttons, playing snake and trying to. I feel like it's not even a digital game. It's a physical game. It's almost like a game that you hold and you have to like, get the little, the the hoop over the hook, you know, those little handheld games, like get the little ball bearings into certain holes and yeah, yeah, yeah. That usually kind of the friction of the button pressing too. Yeah. And it like pushes the Yeah, yeah. There was like a few different sorts. That's so cool. We should do an episode about like what about those game games. Yeah. And how they translated from being you press something to make something physical happen to. Yeah. The digital implementation of buttons. I did watch this like old movie recently. I can't remember which one it was. I can like find it, put it in the show notes or something. But there was a, there was a character like a brooding guy. I think it was Anwar, and he he had carried with him everywhere like a little one of those little games, but not one with buttons like one that you have to kind of have flat. And then you're trying to get the ball bearings into the holes. And I think it was baseball related in some way, but it was almost like instead of a mobile phone, like he'd just be like waiting somewhere and he'd pull it out and like, play with it and then do these weird kind of movements with his body, Right? Yeah. Well, it was more yeah, I think like the camera, like, just zoomed in on the game. Okay. It would show him using it, but it kind of. Yeah, I suppose. Like the phone replaced. Yeah. And now. But now you have the sensory trackers in your phone and you have motion trackers and you have GPS trackers that actually make you now do this physical simulation that is supposed to reflect something in the game, but you're doing it with your body at home, which is very weird. I read something about how, you know, everyone now is like, oh, you know, people like looking down at their phones and walking around and like, not looking up or whatever. But I did read something a while ago about how ages ago there was like a craze in kaleidoscopes. You know, those things that you look through and you can like, Yeah. And there's like sparkles inside and stuff and it makes like you're looking at all weird. And apparently whenever this was, people would like, walk around and like looking in them and crash in to pay for anything and they kaleidoscopes. And there was like articles like this is a recorder, you know. Yeah. When was this right. Let me look it up. It was invented in 1816 and I think it became a thing just like after that, like early, early 19th century. Yeah. The first consumable technology. But I think, I think that it just sort of shows that a lot of the things that we think about, about phones or that, you know, it's like, oh, they're time wasters or, you know, we're just like scrolling or we're on them all the time. We don't look up. I think a lot of that actually is just replacing other shit that we. Yeah, yeah. I never use like to waste time. It's fine to be. Yeah. You don't have to be productive and working all the time. I mean, sure, if you bump into people, like that's kind of annoying, but even the stuff that's bad, like if you think of being addicted to scrolling or whatever, like, I'm sure there were random things that people were doing, like little pocket devices and stuff like games and things, books, even books or reading. I know or I'm addicted to read, but yeah, that like a lot of it is just human nature. And yeah, you know, at the moment the tool that is mainstream for that is a phone is a phone. But for years we did the same stuff with whatever it was. It had. Yeah, we're just distracted creatures. We just need, we just need to be constantly amused. Yeah. I mean, like going back to this interface development, which was still in the mid to late nineties, it was still using eighties video text interface, but through Btecs it's kind of crazy to think about because this phone that I was using to think that I was essentially using parts of BTEC technology is is just wild to me and it obviously makes me feel really old. But at the same time it's, it's fun to think about how you can spot little visual snippets of kind of tech evolution in products that you're using now and that you used to use as a kid. I think that we're living through a really particular moment in history where like we still have access to a lot of the people that started the whole computer thing. And you and I, like you're a little younger than me, but I think we're both sort of of the generation that didn't have Internet. And then did, you know, even just like the shift from a Nokia flip phone to an iPhone to a smartphone was ridiculous. Yeah. And it's kind of cool to be living through that and to be able to notice and experience the way things kind of evolve. Yeah, Yeah. I think our phones are really good tracking of that because they were around for a long time and they changed a lot. And with the introduction of the iPhone that then spewed into the product launches of, of MacBook S and different computers. So I think again, like what we've really learned from some of these podcasts is that these phone networks were so, so important to the development of computers and networks in general and online networks like the Internet. But yeah, unfortunately the story of Btc's has a bit of a tragic ending and reputation. It had serious security issues because data was transferred unauthenticated and in plaintext. I guess like at the time they didn't really think about, they were like, Yeah, it's safe. Yeah, I was saying like it was in plaintext now, but I'm not sure if there was like another option. True, True. Yeah. I mean, it led to the the Btc's hack by Wow Holland in 1984, which was not that long ago after its launch. No, it's a very well known case in computer science kind of folklore. But yeah, so while Holland was part of the chaos Computer Club, the key. That's a great name. Yeah. If I had a club, I'd be like, It's chaos. And it's also like organized crime where chaotic. But we're also a club and we're really and this is the secretary and this is and just by chance we have a name that is also has a lot of alliteration in it. Yeah. Good for logos Yeah. And so this yeah that club was founded in the early eighties and it was very popular between German speaking communities is I think it was made up of 7700 members and it's apparently Europe's largest association of hackers and essentially became famous because of the BTCS hack. So the ATX hack caused the system to debit 134,000 Deutschmark, which would be about 70 to 80000 U.S. dollars. Today in a bank in Hamburg. And the money was returned the next day in front of the press, which the club must have set up because there were very public and open about this hack. Well, I guess they're trying. They were worried that they realized that the system was really easily hackable. Yes. And they wanted I guess the government wasn't doing anything about it and they wanted to actually make it obvious. The ATX could have also caused a lot of individual issues as well. Like I don't think it was a completely bulletproof interface and system and I can imagine people were quite annoyed by it sometimes. And so these hackers kind of made this plan to steal the money and then give it back and not be imprisoned and just kind of make a public statement about it. There's even we even watch some YouTube videos earlier of the hackers like speaking very openly about the hack to a German interviewer. And they were quite pompous in talking about how unsafe it was and how terrible the system was. The CDC completely debunked the assumption that the BTCC system was safe to use for the public, even though it was the biggest commercially available online system at the time. And it was run and heavily advertised by the West German Telecommunications Agency and Postal Service, which also strove to keep up to date alternatives out of the market. Oh, wow. Okay. So there were like other options and they're like, no, this is someone with a little money into it. So again, because they developed it, Yeah, so much for Western structures of, you know, a rigid freedom of information just didn't didn't work very well. And also a little ironic because it was btcs was yeah, like we said earlier, very much a statement of the time that's West Germany inventing new technology, aligning itself to Western counterparts that were making their own technology and using CPE and monitor and liberating society. Yeah, I think it was very embarrassing when this hack happened. Politically, I feel like this hack, like a hack like this could have happened probably in any country that had a video text service that it's, I don't know, sort of interesting to like think about it within the context of everything you've said about in the political history of Germany and West Germany and that sort of, I guess, the video tech system. Yeah. Was this like striving to align with Western Europe and yeah, that it's being kind of dissected a little bit more or kind of critiqued or questioned by individuals by how high the club. Yeah. By communities know for sure. And they really made it clear that they thought it was a really bad system. The fact that they really underscored this was because there was this disbelief in the political system, I think as well, a little bit in West Germany, you know, there was a divide and West Germany was more liberal and it was better than East, but there were still people that there are still issues in the system and people that were disheartened by the divide and by the fact that maybe even West Germany wasn't doing enough then I think it was very much symbolized. And in some of the anarchistic views of like the Chaos Computer Club and the hackers. And so I think it was a bit of a would say political statement as well. I think the the Cass Computer Club is quite interesting because they did a lot of hacks, but there were also like related to a lot of financial tool hacks of of systems that weren't secure with moving money around. And the fact that that happened again in the eighties when the East was so deprived and in so much poverty and money was truly it was so was such an issue for the East that it was almost like, I think, a sense of to the Germans in the West to be like the Deutsche Bank is just moving money around so freely. And it's so, it's so kind of liberal in its transferring juxtaposed to the poverty that's happening in the East. I think it was quite emotionally charged because again, like a lot of people would have family and friends in the East and the West and socially the divide was terrible for the Deutsche Bank just handled it in such a carefree way and say like, yeah, that sort of interaction, the East west interaction, given that the tech originally was coming from the East. Yeah, yeah. And that there was a kind of hidden collaboration there and that it was just mishandled. Yeah. Anyway, thanks for this. Great. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for listening. Yeah, I guess we're going to go explore London. I'm going to open the door, and then you open your door and then we'll be in the hallway together. We'll give each other a pat on the back. Is it handshake? Business like handshake? Next episode. I know we've got a couple of just a couple more left in this season, and then we're going to kind of move on to some other interesting topics. So we're got to work out what order we're going to do some things. Yeah, I'm here this week largely to go to a pool tournament, so my teacher is playing, which is sort of fun, but he's German, so maybe we can ask him. We can ask him about some texts. Yeah, I wouldn't have been around in the eighties as well, so yeah, he would have said, Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to go up some pool now and enjoy London. Yeah, but thanks. Yeah. Thanks everyone for listening and being here with us. Yes, thanks everyone. Bye bye.