Spreepark

This guide to Spreepark in Berlin's Plänterwald follows Norbert Witte, heir to a German carnival dynasty, who ran East Germany's only permanent funfair after it opened in 1969 and drew up to 1.7 million visitors a year under communism. It traces the park's decline after the Berlin Wall fell, and the January 2002 night when Witte loaded six rides onto ships bound for Peru and vanished with his family, eleven million euros in debt. Desperate for money in Lima, he agreed to something far worse than debt.