… I was sitting in a pub in West Germany with a handful of friends when someone came over and told us [rather excitedly] that the Berlin Wall was open and masses of people were streaming through. We could hardly believe it. Granted, it wasn’t entirely a surprise, since there had been a leak in the Iron Curtain in Hungary for a few weeks already, and the East German authorities had been planning to let people through to the West. But nobody was expecting it to happen so soon.
There was the distinct feeling of something momentous happening. It was totally exhilarating.
I went home to my tiny flat that was located in a one of the myriad prefab buildings that had been hastily slapped up after the war, where the walls were so paper thin you could hear people breathing on the other side. I’d been living in Germany for almost a year but wasn’t yet fluent in the language, though I could speak and understand a bit. I flicked on the little black and white TV that someone had given me and watched in amazement as people danced on the wall and cried tears of joy and hugged each other.
That evening and the entire year that followed, I had the euphoric sense of being part of history in the making. Of course, about 18 months after the wall came down, both sides were already grumbling about reunification. The East Germans hardly knew how to function in the capitalist system, and the West Germans were resentful about all the extra taxes they had to pay for the reconstruction of the East. The two sides no longer felt much like brethren.
I remained in Germany for another four years after the wall came down, and by the time I left, tensions were so high in German society that I found it almost unbearable to live there. But it was an amazing and exhilarating time, and I feel richer for having been a part of it.
MEANWHILE, BACK IN REYKJAVÍK
It has been a gray and damp day – on occasion VERY damp, in fact. Raining cats and dogs, in fact. Almost everyone I talked to today was chilled to the bone. It’s that kind of damp. Right now it’s 6°C [43F]. Sunrise was at 9.35 and sunset at 4.45 pm.
[I wrote about my trip to Berlin a few months after the wall came down here.]
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes, Alda, I can imagine what an experience it was for you. My sense is that it has settled somewhat. I can’t help feeling that East German’s lost out enormously.
How could I forget…actually we missed it on the 9th since we visited a commemoration ceremony for the crystal night of the nazi period, which happened 50 yers earlier.
But I have been woken on the morning of the 10th with the breaking news. And although I went to school, we soon left for the Brandenburg Gate and stood on the wall – something very amazing. And on the next day, I had my birthday – without party, we have just been on tour in Berlin.
The mood was very happy and peacefull – I have never had this again. And this changed quite when more and more people from the west came over and tried to tell people, what is now right and wrong. I think, many chances have been lost in this time.
Chris – well, then, Happy Birthday!!
I remember the first year anniversary in 1990 of the wall coming down. I remember that so much better than the original event, probably because I was working too hard in autumn 1989. My memory of the wall coming down therefore became strangely associated with the events of 1990 (including where I was living that year, etc). So, yesterday, I suspected that historians were playing a trick because the event really happened a year later than everyone is letting on. The BBC, CNN, etc are all colluding with them. Now even IWR too!
Alda: Thanks…but not before tomorrow
My father was a soldier in the US Army in World War Two. He was in the unit that linked up with the Soviet Army in Berlin in 1945 and the war ended.
I have photos of him drinking wine with Russian soldiers and people playing violins and celebrating in the field there.
None of the Western allies took the divisions of sectors, decided upon before the wars end, seriously. French and American and Russian and British soldiers and German civilians moved about more or less freely.
As part of the war cleanup my dads army division was going to roll up its communications wires laid to Leipzig, where they had been. When they approached the Russian sector they saw barbed wire had been strung and Russian sentries met them with machine guns. Overnight an order was given that changed everything there for a longtime.
My dad had been offered a promotion and an office in Berlin but declined in order to go home before a hot war broke out with the Red Army. He had enough of war. A cold war was not a thought then, as Berlin was literally still afire, in places.
When the wall came down in the 1990s my father was still living and he was very serious about it, not celebrating. He had seen it form up out of nothing on its first days.
Anyway I thought it was a story to share.
Wow, to be part of that original moment must have been just as you said, totally exhilarating. And also now that the dust has settled things are not so rosey if you happen to be in or from the ‘poor’ side of where the wall once stood. That’s why it is important to remember that day.
In my teens I was fascinated by that stupid wall. And now I wonder why we still build them in other places.
And don’t forget that we’re almost at 11-11 which is also a big day especially with the current wars still raging.
‘Lest We Forget’
I remember this very well. Driving from the former Western Germany to visit a friend in Berlin on the morning of the 10th of November 1989, I met all those oncoming Trabant cars going west. And then we went to the Brandenburg Gate. Those days were really very moving.
Unfortunately, many false promises by politicians about the reunification lead to wrong expectations, which had a bad influence on the whole process.
And the many eruptions of violent xenophobia in Eastern Germany did certainly not benefit its image.
The nasty wind and rain was my welcome to Reykjavik on sunday. I got not just chilled to the bone but also completely wet. But I was compensated by two beautiful and (mostly) sunny days on Snæfellsnes.