Thirty Four years ago this evening, Die Mauer (The Wall) fell in Berlin; I danced on the Berlin Wall the night it fell along with a few of my then Army colleagues and we knew, at that time, that we were living our very own Kennedy moment and when asked in the years to come "do you remember where you were when the Berlin Wall fell?" we'd be able to answer "yup, drinking beer and dancing on it !!"
The day after I chissled off a chunk and I can see it right now this minute sat on the windowsill in my office. It's said that if you lay all the pieces of the Wall that exist today, end to end, you'd get a longer Wall than it actually was; within days, you could see people making wooden frames, pouring in concrete, letting it set and dry, painting it breaking it up and selling it to unsuspecting tourists. Capitalism arrived quickly that month to the East Germans.
(Photo not taken by me (but I'm very likely to be in that crowd on the lower part of the Wall in front of the Brandenburgh Gate))
@monikozi We'd spent the Summer watching the protests along the West/East border, as folk streamed across into the Western embassies. Carole left Berlin in the September, not believing anything of this magnitude was in the offing. It came totally out of the blue (and as history has proven it was a border guard error in opening the border but once open it was never going to close again). The world changed that night, possibly not entirely for the better in some aspects.
What a great photo! I have one of those fake wall chunks. Some friends went to Berlin a year after the wall fell and when they gifted me with a wall piece I just knew it couldn’t be real. It’s too shiny and new looking.
Amazing! This is a scene I know so well! My now husband as there too as a student. And I used to pass through the transit route from West Germany to Berlin at weekends on the train to visit! Keep sharing your memories. I will dig some of ours out too to share.
So momentous, younger generations I don't think, know the huge meaning of this. I left instagram when a woman posted her dislike of the democratic/capitalistic governance in Western Culture. I told her, unlike the Socialist and Communist regimes of the past, at least she could leave the country she disagreed with.
A wonderful moment, but important only for our generation. The world is moving forward, although more and more often I have the impression that it is only spinning.
