When I was in primary school, there were two street names in my hometown that I always got wrong. My teacher looked at me with disbelief and worry when I called the street next to the school Wolgaster Straße.

My geography skills improved dramatically after 1989, when the street names finally caught up with me. I grew up in the German Democratic Republic; call it DDR, GDR, or East Germany. The street names my teachers insisted on were Wilhelm Pieck Allee (Allee means promenade) and Otto Grotewohl Allee, named after the first President and Prime Minister of my dear republic. At home, I had learned to refer to these streets as Wolgaster Straße (Straße means street) and Anklamer Straße. Wolgast and Anklam are nearby cities. If you go to Wolgast, you leave the city via Wolgaster Straße. These street names are neat mnemonic devices; they point to nearby places. My pre-1989 teacher was not worried about my lack of knowledge. She must have known that the names I used were from a different time. For her, remembering the wrong name was worse than forgetting the (politically) correct name. After 1989, the old names returned.

Since then, I never got in trouble over street names again – that is, until I moved to Berlin a few weeks ago for part of my sabbatical. It’s my first time living in Berlin. My parents grew up in this city. In their twenties, they moved away. Their memories of the city are from the 1970s. When I talk about places, subway stops, and streets in Berlin, my mother often has no idea what I am talking about. Danziger Straße? Torstraße? Where would that be? These places are not even in the former West Berlin; they are in the East. My parents knew them and yet don’t recognize them. Danziger Straße used to be called Dimitroffstraße when my mother roamed these quarters.

The obsession with naming and renaming streets pre-dates the East German state. I recently finished reading Hans Fallada’s amazing novel . . .

Read more: Making Sense of Place: Naming Streets and Stations in Berlin and Beyond