By Ernest Gill

Hamburg, Nov 8 (DPA) On Thursday evening, Nov 9, 1989, West German public TV stations signed off the air at about midnight, as usual. Residents of Hamburg, a mere 50 km from the East German border, went to bed, dreaming of little than the next workday and the following weekend. Little did they know it would be a Friday like no other.

The next day, people in Hamburg and other West German cities along the East German border awoke to find convoys of drably dressed people driving dilapidated East German cars through their streets in search of - of all things - bananas!

Suddenly, roads blocked off for nearly 30 years were open to traffic. Homes which had fronted on idyllic isolation on a dead-end street suddenly fronted major east-west thoroughfares clogged with cross-border traffic and exhaust fumes.

And all because of bananas.

Over the years, the "Banana Revolution" theory has faded from memory. But on the weekend after the Berlin Wall checkpoints opened, people in West Germany were dumbfounded by the veritable convoys of East Germans - travelling together because they had no maps - on shopping expeditions in search of the tropical fruit.

West German food retailers displayed their capitalist cunning by setting up produce stands on major roads. They quickly learned, however, that the hordes of East German shoppers were not interested in kiwi fruit or mangoes. All they really wanted was bananas.

Within days, hastily set-up vendors were competing for customers on every street corner in West German cities. The wide-eyed East German visitors obediently formed long queues.

It was a memorable sight. On an upscale street in Hamburg lined with couture boutiques, nattily dressed West Germans would be laden with parcels from high-end shops as they passed a sidewalk banana vendor where a long, long line of grey-clad East Germans waited patiently for a bunch of bananas.