GERMANY IN TRANSITION : Berliners in ‘Shopping Revolution’ : East Bloc: Many East German day-trippers are visiting the West just to buy long-scarce goodies.

Hundreds of young protesters filled the cobblestone square as dusk gathered Friday in the heart of East Berlin, where anti-government banners flapped in an icy November wind.

Suddenly, a student festooned with plastic bananas appeared in the crowd and blew on a rusty bugle.

“The revolution,” he shouted, “is going shopping.”

And even as the protesters marched through the capital demanding reforms, hundreds of their comrades were marching out.

Out and then back--with Batman souvenirs and bags of oranges, radios, albums and other goodies from the newly accessible West.

Meet the day-trippers of the East Bloc: While more than 200,000 East Germans have fled to West Germany for good, the vast majority are just browsing, thank you.

Andy Schmeka, a 19-year-old political science student from Brandenburg, spent several hours in West Berlin with a group of friends on the first day that East Germany threw open its borders.

Once there, he “looked and looked and looked,” then ate some chocolate cupcakes, bought 12 pounds of oranges and came happily home.

“I know my place,” Schmeka said while sipping espresso in a nearly empty East Berlin coffeehouse.

“I have no desire to live over there,” he said. “There’s unemployment and crime . . . people who are too poor and people who are too rich. If I leave, I can’t change things here.”

What needs changing, say East Germans who stayed behind, is not only the political system but the economy as well.

State subsidies keep the cost of living artificially low here. The average monthly salary is about 1,300 marks, or about $725. Apartments often rent for less than 5% of that.

West Berliners come over here to go to the barber shop or to a beauty parlor, said Roberto Coselli, concierge at the swank Grand Hotel.

“Perms cost only 30 marks here, compared to 85 or 90 in West Berlin,” he said, “and when you figure that West Berliners change money on the black market at a rate of 10 East marks for one West, instead of our official one-for-one rate, well, it ends up costing you about the same as a bunch of bananas over there, right?”

Paper Money

East German marks are virtually worthless abroad, which is partly why West Germany gives 100 marks spending money to every East German on his or her first visit. East Germans are allowed to exchange only 15 marks per year in their own country.

Living can be cheap here. It costs only pennies to ride a bus or subway, and grocery shelves appear well stocked with affordable food of acceptable quality. A five-pound sack of potatoes costs less than 25 cents. A frozen chicken runs the equivalent of about $2.

On the other hand, tropical fruit, coffee and many fresh vegetables are scarce or costly. East Germany must compete with capitalist countries that pay hard currency for, say, oranges from Spain or bell peppers from Holland. A pound of coffee costs the same here as dinner for two at a nice restaurant.

The only bananas to be found in a bustling East Berlin supermarket are tiny packets of brown, dried bananas imported from Vietnam.

“They taste terrible,” said one frowning shopper.

East Germans must apply 12 to 16 years in advance for a small Soviet-made car, wait 10 years for a telephone and up to 20 years for an apartment. But hospital visits, child care and education are free.

Boutiques on the fashionable boulevard Unten den Linden offer a narrow selection of what East Germans consider luxuries--a simple crepe blouse for a quarter of a month’s salary, a bottle of French after-shave for about six days’ work. It takes five months’ salary to pay for a color television.

But these days, many East Germans note hopefully, change is coming faster than anyone ever expected.

And the good mood is actually visible in the capital. Border police now crack jokes with the same people who, not so long ago, they had orders to shoot for any attempt to flee to the West.

East Berliners chat amiably with the foreign journalists who swarm over their city--the same ones they would have been forced to shun less than a year ago.

“We used to be so crabby and nasty,” admitted Manfred Haedler, chief dramatist for Berlin’s German State Opera.

“But the tension isn’t there any more. Now there’s just so much hope and optimism,” he said.

For many, the freedom to travel for the first time in 28 years means, as one teen-age shop girl put it, “the freedom to dream.”

A bellhop dreams of showing his family the tulip fields in Holland next spring, while an economist has promised his wife a second honeymoon in Paris. A college student can’t decide between Australia and the American West.

“The trouble is, our money is basically worthless abroad,” said a teacher who quickly spent her 100-mark gift on her first trip to West Berlin.

Such concerns didn’t trouble a silver-haired grandfather joining Friday’s demonstration.

“This makes me so proud,” the man said as he waded into the crowd. “We Germans have never finished a revolution before, and I think we’re finally going to see one through. A bloodless revolution, but a real revolution.”