Spend enough time as a pedestrian in the former East Berlin – and it doesn’t actually take that long – and you begin to notice that the Walk/Don’t Walk signals aren’t like anywhere else. Green and red, respectively, like everywhere else, but otherwise unique cartoon men in hats.

This is the Walk sign.

That probably would have remained a passing thought for us, but at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof we spotted a store selling goods and souvenirs based on the cartoon man, who has a name: Ampelmann, that is, Traffic Light Man. The postcards were a bit expensive, but I was so amused I bought one to send and one to keep.

I sent the Walk green Ampelmann and kept the card with the Don’t Walk red Ampelmann (see below), who stands in front of various noteworthy structures in Berlin, such as the Brandenburg Gate, the TV tower at Alexanderplatz, and the Victory Column in the Tiergarten. The Walk green Ampelmann card has the same structures, but he’s strolling past them.

We also picked up an fine intangible souvenir when we learned about Traffic Light Man and his robust gait and distinctive headwear. It’s hard to know when you’ll find those, but find them you do if you’re paying just a little attention. Also, he’s a bit of fun on the beaten path — what could be more literally a beaten path than a street crosswalk?

The woman behind the counter told me that the lights were created in East Berlin in the 1960s, and when reunified Berlin wanted to phase them out in the 1990s, Berliners east and west weren’t having it. By then he was no mere traffic accessory, but a small yet vivid cultural phenomenon, star of comic strips, games and radio spots. He was too popular to be erased from street crossings throughout the east. So he remains, a rare beloved relic of the DDR, though I understand his backlights are now thoroughly modern LEDs.

I got an additional souvenir in the form of a bag from the shop.

The story of Ampelmann, first drawn in 1961, is told by the web site of that name, including information about his creator, Berlin resident Karl Peglau (d. 2009), who is described as a traffic psychologist. I can’t ever remember hearing about that profession before, but I’d say that traffic in a lot of places could use professional help. Whatever your job, you could do a lot worse for a legacy than Ampelmann.

The main Ampelmann shop is on Unter den Linden. We must have walked right past it. But somehow we didn’t miss the DDR Museum a little further on, where the thoroughfare is called Karl-Liebknecht-Straße – another relic of East Berlin (before that, it was Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße).

We didn’t feel like visiting the museum itself, but we did go to the gift shop.

As my wont, I got a few more postcards, while Jay got a refrigerator magnet. This one: Marx, Engels and Lenin. None of them, of course, lived long enough to encounter refrigerator magnets, but I’m pretty sure they would have denounced them as bourgeois frivolity. All the more reason to get some.