The Fall of the Wall
 

I've been following with much interest all the stories about the fall of the Berlin Wall. It seems amazing to me that 20 years have already passed. Lisa and I had the chance to travel to Berlin in May of 1990, the wall was breached but the Germany's were still divided and to visit the East, we still (as American Citizens) had to pass through checkpoint Charlie.

When we arrived their a model was doing a photo shoot, skimpy outfit, glass of champagne, and a peaked soviet army cap. Berlin was giddy. But walking into the East it was like stepping back into time, the streets, the buildings, many still baring the scars of WW2, we were back in 1945 and this was the Germany that lost. Romanian Gypsies roamed the streets in bright polyester among the more dower Ossies, and they gladly took our Deutschmarks, or any other western currency we were willing to part with.

The before an after pictures amaze me, how much Berlin has changed. Growing up, I never expected to see this happen. A divided Europe, and divided world were immutable realties - nuclear annihilation being the only other possible future anyone ever cared to speculate about. And yet the wall came down with so many unexpected consequences, the velvet revolution of the Czech Republic, the violence in Yugoslavia. So many unforeseen futures now written into the past.

Cheers Berlin, I'd love to come back and see what you've become.

I was just at that age (barely 15) where I was aware enough to know it was important but to not actually care much. It didn't help that my German 1/2 teacher didn't talk about much else. We were bored more than fascinated by his stories of his family escaping to West Berlin shortly before the wall went up.

For some reason that fall of the Soviet Union the next year had a much bigger impact even though it was a less coherent singular event.

I was just watching a neat show on History channel about the Wall and how some people got over it, like via balloon, ultra-light, and even a zip line. Great stuff.

I've thought about this so much today. I was a kid when we woke up one morning and there was a great big wall across the middle of a city. Growing up it was just life, two Germanys, two Berlins.

November, 1989 and I was 8 months pregnant with our youngest. We were moving into a bigger place and I was cleaning the new empty apt, my 14 month old and a black and white portable tv plugged in for company. I stopped to see what the news break was. I was overwhelmed. I could not imagine this new world, this world without the Wall. My kids would never know what it was, it would just be part of their history class. I never forgot that morning.

A piece of that wall is sitting on the table next to my desk, it's one of my prize possessions. I have no idea why I've always felt this emotional about it. I just roll with it.

What a tremendous moment in history. I can recall sitting in my apartment while in school, watching news coverage on TV, completely amazed and ecstatic.

I also own a piece of the wall. It's an exterior portion with a small bit of graffiti on it. I wish there was some way to know exactly what portion of the wall it came from and what the entire section of graffiti looked like.

While I had never been to Berlin, in the summer of 1985, I had a chance to be at the Austria-Hungary border at a place they called the "Desert Lake". The border went down the middle of the lake, and about 50 yards over the border, spaced about 100 yards apart, were guard towers, and I was close enough to see the guards with their automatic rifles standing there, looking for anyone trying to leave. Out guide told us that the pseudo forest next to the lake had hundreds of people shot annually as they tried to excape. It was at that point I realized what the Soviet Bloc was. It really was a life changing experience for me.

I was only 12 but my parents made sure to explain it to me, and like everyone else I saw the images on TV. Can't say I fully understood what a big deal it was, but I do remember thinking that this kind of change was inevitable, from restraint to freedom, and that things would continue to get better worldwide. Yeah, I was young. ;)

Yep. Me, too.

I keep reading this tread title as "The Fall off the Wall."

(or should that be "auf"?)

If anyone wants to see a piece of the wall in Orange County, there is a chunk on display at Chapman University's main campus. :)

Big hunk O wall at the Reagan library, too. Yeah, Sceagles, believe it or not, I've been there. :) Photographic proof does exist of me and a very conservative friend on Air Force One.