How did you feel when the Berlin Wall fell

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Lately I've been listening to a lot of scorpions and sting and they've got a lot of material about the cold war and the Berlin Wall.

Then I went on YouTube and looked up footage of the Berlin Wall falling and people talking about it. Sad I wasn't born, seemed like an awesome moment to witness.

So, older folk, talk about the day the Berlin Wall fell

As much detail as possible
 
Hmm..older folk..>
I traveled through no mans land from West Germany To East Germany in 1972. .our buses were boarded by guards armed with machine guns demanding passports and visas. .our being in order we were allowed to cross the 20 mile barren stretch of road. .
I went through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin for tour guided by an East Berlin guide, pointing out the wonders of the East German way of life. . but looking down side streets the poverty and sadness was evident. .
I stood on an observation platform on the west side of the wall. .I was shaken by the memorial markers placed where people had been shot by the east for trying to escape. One in particular haunts me to this day, a 10 year old girl. She was shot by soldiers trying to cross into West Berlin. .It made me realize how blessed I was to live in America. .and that haunting image makes me fear the age of trump and this slow roll towards dictatorship, ,but that's not what you asked. .
The wall was terrifying. .building a wall to keep the west out, that was the explanation by the east. .it is burned in my memory, the sight of it, the horror of it. .
 
I felt quite a thrill when it came down. My friend in Hamburg sent me a little piece of it in the mail. I never visited it, though. I was still a teenager and it was one of those things that seemed so sad and wrong in the world. I had no idea there would be so much more sadness and wrongness to learn about. But in that moment, it seemed triumphant that the era of the wall had ended in Berlin.

That was the same time when statues were being toppled in the Soviet Union and there was a lot of confusion and terrible hardship there with Gorbachev in power. It was a crazy weird time. I did get to visit there. Such sadness and darkness, but the people still carried little sparks of light in them.
 
Thank you so much both of you for sharing. I would think a lot of you even younger folks were alive in 1991 and I wonder how many of you who were children or teenagers have memories too, even if they are vague?
 
I was alive. And just over a year old in 1989. So I have no memory of this.

To be honest I don't think I knew the EU was a thing until High School.

Germany was Germnay. France was France. Italy was Italy. And I barely left the UK so none of it mattered.
 
It is a feeling that gets burned into you. . when those solders got on our bus, muzzle of a machine gun in my face demanding papers. knowing that the wrong word or move could get any or all of us drug out and killed on the spot. of course I didn't speak German and they didn't speak English. .it gave me a first hand look at how it is in so much of the world that faces that every day.
It is very important that we never forget what the world can be like, all because of ideological differences. two nations, separated by 20 miles of roaming bands of heavily armed solders, tanks, land mines. .
when the wall came down it was like we came to our senses. .
 
Aneirin said:
It is a feeling that gets burned into you. . when those solders got on our bus, muzzle of a machine gun in my face demanding papers. knowing that the wrong word or move could get any or all of us drug out and killed on the spot. of course I didn't speak German and they didn't speak English. .it gave me a first hand look at how it is in so much of the world that faces that every day.
It is very important that we never forget what the world can be like, all because of ideological differences. two nations, separated by 20 miles of roaming bands of heavily armed solders, tanks, land mines. .
when the wall came down it was like we came to our senses. .
Click to expand...

Ah, the hope one day everyone will be like that.

Tear down our differences and embrace our common humanity. All come to our senses.
 
Watched it on the news that night and there was a sense of history being made. If only we could have known what an arse we would eventually make of it. It's unlikely we would have eventually had Achtung Baby though, one of U2's few redeeming moments.

Edit: I remember the cartoon in the Independent that week: it was a pic of Hitler and Stalin bowing on a stage as the curtain came down on them. "Their World has Come To a Close".
 
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