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from the how-many-of-us-remember-it-now? dept.
The Berlin wall was erected on 13 August 1961. It was breached on 9 November 1989, after 28 years, 2 months and 27 days (10315 days, to be exact). Counting forward another 28 years, 2 months and 27 days (or just 10315 days, you get the same answer) takes us to tomorrow, 5 February 2018.
Below is the blog entry I posted on the twentieth anniversary of the Fall of the Wall, in 2009. Since then, I have continued to enjoy visiting Berlin; and I always pay my respects to the Wall and its memories, for me and for many others.
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2959427.html
[Editor's Comment: I too had the pleasure of serving in Berlin on 2 separate tours of duty, alongside US and French colleagues. The city was vibrant and full of places to see and things to do. However, I never lost the feeling that we lived in a very restricted environment. I was one of the fortunate ones in that my military duties meant I also had the opportunity to work in what was then East Germany. I'm glad that those days are long gone.]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday February 06 2018, @12:45AM
I was an exchange student in West Germany when the Wall came down. It was an incredible moment. I was in Cologne with my host family but my friend's parents were Berliners, so a week after the first moment when people climbed over the section at the Brandenburg Gate we drove out to stay with his friend's aunt in West Berlin.
The drive itself was memorable, because my friend's father was an executive recruiter who had placed most of Citroen's leadership; they lent him an experimental Citroen that could do 250mph so we rode that on the Autobahn until we hit the East German border where we had to choke it back to 50mph because that was as fast as the Ossies' Trabant police cruisers could go.
Berlin then was giddy. There were still people partying. The Ossies walked around agape at what the Wessies had. "Wahnsinn" (crazy cool) was the word on everyone's lips, the Ossies because of the opulence, the Wessies because of their joy at the liberationof their countrymen who had been so cruelly imprisoned for so long.
We went to the Wall that stood between the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate. Everyone had hammers and chisels and was busily chipping away, so we joined in. It was difficult because the section there was hardened concrete to frustrate fugitives tunneling through. Eventually we filled a bag with pieces, most of which i gave away as souvenirs to friends back home but some of which i still have.
There were also east german soldiers selling their uniforms and medals, so i bought a hat and some medals. I gave the hat to my best friend in college, a red-headed Jew from Philadelphia who fetishized communism as a gag. I kept a medal with the east german flag on it that i pinned to the front of a greek fisherman's cap.
The one picture i wish i could have taken that day was of the west german flag flying over the Reichstag, the east german flag over the Brandenburg Gate, the Wall crumbling between, and the streams of people filing through the gaps carrying bags with everything they owned (it was almost as though they didn't trust the openness to last.)
we finished the visit at Checkpoint Charlie, where we toured the museum. the ways people smuggled others through the checkpoints or flew or swam or tunneled under the border were a powerful testament to man's hunger to be free.
The experience, the exhiliration, the tears of joy, the looks on my friend's parents' faces, is as fresh to me now as it was then. I have always considered myself very lucky to have witnessed history in the making. Hard to believe it was 28 years ago.
Washington DC delenda est.