East German message in a bottle washed up 23 years later

Goettingen, Germany - A message in a bottle, written by an 11-year old East German boy in 1987, has been fished out of the river 23 years later by a lad in western Germany, media reported Friday. Youri Maibohm, aged 9, found the bottle and its faded message, in a pile of flotsam drifting down a river in the town of Goettingen. It had been written by a boy in search of a pen-pal, in the former East German state of Thuringia.

The author of the letter, Marko Bode, said he was "very surprised," by the discovery. The electrical engineer, now aged 34, remembered the day that he and his friends had cast their messages into the river.

"It was very exciting," Bode told daily Goettinger Tagblatt, adding that he would still be interested in meeting the pen-pal, 23 years on.

The communist East German state ceased to exist in 1990, when Germany was reunified after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/313744,east-german-message-in-a-bottle-washed-up-23-years-later.html.