Today marks a quarter century since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Any thoughts, memories, what were you doing at the time ?
Quote
Germany marks anniversary of fall of Berlin Wall[/b]
9 November 2014 Last updated at 02:09
Celebrations are being held in Germany to mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Concerts and exhibitions are being staged in the city and Chancellor Angela Merkel will later attend a huge open-air party at the Brandenburg Gate.
White balloons marking a stretch of the wall will be released to symbolise its disappearance.
The Berlin Wall was built in 1961 to stop people fleeing from Communist East Germany to the West.
Its fall in 1989 became a powerful symbol of the end of the Cold War.
Chancellor Merkel will be joined for the festivities by former Polish trade union leader Lech Walesa and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader.
The wall stretched for 155km (96 miles) through Berlin but today only about three kilometres of it still stands.
Within a year of its collapse, Germany - divided after its defeat in World War Two - was reunited.
....
Full article here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29974950 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29974950)
I was in Berlin in August 1989. I wish I had stayed a few more months. :)
Easily the best thing that ever happened in German history.
I was still a child back then and lived in a city close to the border and when they opened it, but I do remember how everybody was elated and how all of a sudden there were lots of Trabants on the road.
Quote from: Zanza on November 09, 2014, 10:00:12 AM
Easily the best thing that ever happened in German history.
Damn that's some faint praise! :o
Quote from: Zanza on November 09, 2014, 10:00:12 AM
Easily the best thing that ever happened in German history.
I was still a child back then and lived in a city close to the border and when they opened it, but I do remember how everybody was elated and how all of a sudden there were lots of Trabants on the road.
:cool:
Must have been something.
I was cool and stayed in school. Watched it on me telly I suppose.
Watched it on tv, I didn't really understand what was happening but it was clearly very important.
A few days later our teacher asked us to take our history book and skip to the last chapter. It described the present world, going into great detail on the iron curtain and Berlin wall. Then the penny dropped, new history had been written. The concept completely blew my mind.
Quote from: Maladict on November 09, 2014, 01:48:18 PM
Watched it on tv, I didn't really understand what was happening but it was clearly very important.
A few days later our teacher asked us to take our history book and skip to the last chapter. It described the present world, going into great detail on the iron curtain and Berlin wall. Then the penny dropped, new history had been written. The concept completely blew my mind.
:cool:
Good teacher.
Let me guess: you stood on your desks? :rolleyes:
I was sucking dick in the middle of nowhere.
Quote from: Siege on November 12, 2014, 02:56:55 PM
I was sucking dick in the middle of nowhere.
Is dick kosher?
Quote from: Siege on November 12, 2014, 02:56:55 PM
I was sucking dick in the middle of nowhere.
So what'll you do after three Zimas?
I was in high school and a huge current events/Cold War nerd at the time. I knew things were headed in that direction, but didn't realize how quickly they were accelerating.
The first night everyone was dancing on the wall I was taking an early evening nap and my best friend called me up to tell me to turn on the TV. I thought he was joking until I turned on my little black & white 13" TV and saw for myself.
It was amazing, but also somewhat bittersweet-- our war games & simulations were suddenly obsolete: Project Stealth Fighter, Gunship, Reforger '88, Red Storm Rising, to name just a few.
The whole spring and summer of 1989 was a momentous time to begin with - with what was happening in Hungary, in Chechoslovakia, and now moving on to Germany. It still wasn't 100% clear what was going on or where things would end (the USSR didn't fall for another two years) but you knew it was exciting, historic times.
No fancy memories for me - just of watching it on the tv in the basement of the bungalow we lived in at the time.
I was 11 years old. I actually don't have much concrete memories of it, as in "what were you doing when it happened". I remember much more vividly the fall of the URSS, but I was a bit older when that happened.
Whoa, im older than deerspy.
That sucks.
I spent most of 89-90 in a booze induced haze. I was interested in current events, and vaugely knew what was going on, but I didn't follow them as closely as I now wish I had.
Well, it was an eventful year in Poland as well and I was 11 or something. I remember hearing this on tv and not having a clue what it all meant, but I remember there was an anxiety, excitement, a sense of something happening. Only in retrospect it feels like my teenage years were some of the more eventful times in the modern history. ;)
BUT no ejaculations because it was sinful.
The most poignant moment for me when I heard that the Wall had come down is that when I was in Berlin there were crosses commemorating people who had been killed trying to got over the Wall. As I recall it the last one had been shot just months before. I think about that person and how he could have freely crossed just months later.
What is particularly funny/annoying about it is that all the really audacious attempts to escape East Germany seemed to have happened not long before the collapse. Really sucks to be those guys. But yes. Sucks more for the ones who failed.
Quote from: The Brain on November 12, 2014, 05:07:34 PM
BUT no ejaculations because it was sinful.
I was deeply closeted at the time. And about to begin my fling with fundamentalist Catholicism. :P
That year of revolutions pretty much was echoed in my own life.
In addition to lots of personal stuff going on, 89 saw me having 3 different cars, 2/3 jobs, moving 5 times and spending most of the time outside in forests/countryside doing construction engineering. So interesting times too.
From early on in that year, I had keen sense that the world really was changing.
Oh and lets not forget Tiananmen Square.
I learned to use the big boy toilet.
I was a 7 year old than, I've some vague memories of TV and asking my dad if there's a west and an east Germany why there wasn't a west and east Belgium. I remember after the fall of the USSR in 1991 I was excited off all the new countries on the maps, I was kind of a map geek than.
Everybody happy, East Germans showing up in Paris since they had at last freedom to travel. Dad trying to remembering his broken German to give them directions.
Some crooks tried to sell "Berlin Wall rubble" in the flea markets also :lol:
History and geography junior high books were deemed to be soon obsolete as well, but since there was no new program, we still had to study the program as scheduled.
I'd just graduated from University and was starting work in Oxford. I'd snogged and East German on a school trip to Russia and we were briefly pen pals, so its significance wasn't lost on me.
We had a really keen history teacher who was ahead of his several year time schedule. When I graduated in 1992 he was already covering the re-unification with us.
The DDR's and Stasi's lack of an iron-fisted response was the biggest sure-thing Lead Pipe Lock of the Week letdown since the '68 Colts. But totalitarianism made up for it in Beijing.
Quote from: Siege on November 12, 2014, 02:56:55 PM
I was sucking dick in the middle of nowhere.
Business or pleasure?
I remember seeing it on TV and realizing the immensity of the event, the changing of Europe with other former Soviet Bloc nations also having gained independence or would soon as that's how things were heading. I remember before that Poland and Solidarity there, then how I think it was Hungary which was going its own way more and more. I also remember how in Romania there was fighting going on and some of the former rulers were treated quite badly, I think some killed?
"Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Great phrase by Pres Regan from a few years before.
Quote from: KRonn on November 14, 2014, 02:19:46 PM
I remember seeing it on TV and realizing the immensity of the event, the changing of Europe with other former Soviet Bloc nations also having gained independence or would soon as that's how things were heading. I remember before that Poland and Solidarity there, then how I think it was Hungary which was going its own way more and more. I also remember how in Romania there was fighting going on and some of the former rulers were treated quite badly, I think some killed?
"Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Great phrase by Pres Regan from a few years before.
Ceauscuscu (sp?) and his wife were indeed shot.
Ceau-couscous :D
I remember being in church Christmas Eve 1989 and our minister giving a special prayer for the people of Romania. I remember thinking that Couscous shithead was gonna get away. Little did I know he & his wife were about to be ventilated.
Quote from: derspiess on November 14, 2014, 05:19:21 PM
I remember being in church Christmas Eve 1989 and our minister giving a special prayer for the people of Romania. I remember thinking that Couscous shithead was gonna get away. Little did I know he & his wife were about to be ventilated.
That was awesome. As fitting an ending for a pair of shitballs like that if there ever was one.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 14, 2014, 05:28:02 PM
Quote from: derspiess on November 14, 2014, 05:19:21 PM
I remember being in church Christmas Eve 1989 and our minister giving a special prayer for the people of Romania. I remember thinking that Couscous shithead was gonna get away. Little did I know he & his wife were about to be ventilated.
That was awesome. As fitting an ending for a pair of shitballs like that if there ever was one.
It was indeed fitting, personally I think all dictators and perhaps most politicans, certainly leaders deserve a lower level of evidence for 'conviction'.
Quote from: KRonn on November 14, 2014, 02:19:46 PM
....
"Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Great phrase by Pres Regan from a few years before.
I'd forgotten about that, but was actually quoting a Pink Floyd track on the album 'The Wall', plus Roger Walters did an epic stage show of the album at the Brandenburg Gate within a year of Berlin wall falling.
I wonder if he got invited to the celebrations?
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 14, 2014, 05:28:02 PM
Quote from: derspiess on November 14, 2014, 05:19:21 PM
I remember being in church Christmas Eve 1989 and our minister giving a special prayer for the people of Romania. I remember thinking that Couscous shithead was gonna get away. Little did I know he & his wife were about to be ventilated.
That was awesome. As fitting an ending for a pair of shitballs like that if there ever was one.
Qaddafi's ending was pretty epic as well.
we get the point.