OT: 20 Years Ago...
FlatIronMike
changed. Where were you?
I remember seeing the footage of people streaming into West Berlin and
the joy for everyone there!
FlatironMike
Two years, eight months, four weeks, one day, 15 hours, 57 minutes and
33 seconds. 20053 cigarettes not smoked, saving $6,015.74. Life saved:
9 weeks, 6 days, 15 hours, 5 minutes.
Kathleen
remember being wowed at "seeing a piece of history" but I couldn't fully
grasp it at the time, and am not sure I do even today. I was too young to
appreciate it then.
With hope and heart,
Kathleen
"FlatIronMike" <flatiro...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:af07d9e8-fcdb-4c8a...@p35g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
DavidL
I've got a piece of it in a box somewhere.
I can't even remember who gave it to me.
AZ
on TV.
20 years ago! Wow...
On Nov 9, 12:27 pm, FlatIronMike <flatironmike...@gmail.com> wrote:
Tihomir
>The Guards on the Berlin Wall gave up guarding the wall and the world
>changed. Where were you?
>
>I remember seeing the footage of people streaming into West Berlin and
>the joy for everyone there!
I was in the army. The last generation of recruits that went home free
before the war began.
I was actually born in Berlin and lived there as a kid up to age 7. I
have wonderful childhood memories. It might be that all the fuzzy
feeling come from the fact that I am recollecting my childhood, but
still I feel that space and time pure magic.
I remember how we once went to the East side, undergoing strict
controls. It might be the legendary checkpoint Charlie that we used,
I'll have to ask my parents some day. We had to spend every East
Pfennig before returning to the West, as taking East Marks to the West
was strictly prohibited! That's when Mom got her most expensive coat
to this day.
I also remember traveling through East Germany en route to Croatia.
Although Yugoslavia was a socialist/communist country too, although
not in the Warsaw block, it was nowhere as strict and bleak as the
feeling I had from traveling on those almost empty autobahns in East
Germany. Most of those had the original 30's concrete blocks, not
asphalt!
My family left Berlin in 1978. I did not go back until 1991., looking
forward to live the magic again.
I did not find it, but it was a great time nonetheless! I love the
U-Bahn (metro). I love the currywurst, and the down-to-earth mentality
of Berliners.
I hope one day soon I will have a chance to take my family there once
again, to watch my kids walk the paths I walked decades ago.
I can already see them in slow motion, smiling at the strangers in the
park, soaked in the mellow Fall sun.
Ahhhh...
--
Tihomir 2Y5M, Knin, HR 44�N 16�E
http://www.quitbuddies.org
Quote 8695 of 9162:
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to
continue that counts. -- Winston Churchill
PolarBear
20 years ago my world changed over night.
I was home with my girls (3 and 1 years old at that time) watching the
news on TV, not being able to believe what I saw. My mind just
couldn't take it all in, it was just to unreal, it felt more like
watching a movie. But all I had to do was look out of the window to
see that it was real. I was living aprox. 20 km away from the wall.
Later that night I went out on the street and would meet others,
people I never met before just falling into each others arm and
crying, not even knowing why.
The next morning I needed to see for myself. I went with my friends to
the wall expecting that someone would stop us and tell us that we
could not cross the border. I expected to see the East Germany police
and military lined up at the wall with machine guns stopping anyone
trying to leave the East Sector. But there was no one, there were only
tousends of people who didn't believe it was happening, tousends of
people who cried and thought they were dreaming.
Not to many pepole, I know enjoyed their first trip to west germany.
It was just to unreal and we were concerned that my government would
close the border again and we would be stacked in a world and a home
that wasn't ours. But the border never closed again and my children
grew up in freedom.
It was an amazing night, so full of emotions and a new beginning for
Germany. I wished I could be over there right now and celebrate the
night that changed the life of a nation. Lots of Beer.....
HappyPolarBear
PolarBear
> http://www.quitbuddies.org
>
> Quote 8695 of 9162:
> Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to
> continue that counts. -- Winston Churchill
If you go back to Berlin now, after so many years you will see big
chances. Berlin became a great city, they have build so many things
there new. The once so gray east site in Berlin is now very colourful.
I just love it.
HappyPolarBear
HappyPolarBear
Tihomir
>If you go back to Berlin now, after so many years you will see big
>chances. Berlin became a great city, they have build so many things
>there new. The once so gray east site in Berlin is now very colourful.
>I just love it.
Already in 1991. some public services had moved to the east side, so I
had to to unique chance to experience first hand how it looked and
felt on the east. Childhood memories are way to faint for any use.
Oh God how could I forget the Flohmarkts (flea market)! And in 1991.
too, when in addition to all the beautifully weird stuff, you could
find all sorts of stuff related to the communist era, from Russian
binoculars to complete eastern phone booths!
There was a very large Flohmarkt just east of Sch�neberg. I hear the
area is now filled with shiny glassy buildings :-(
--
Tihomir 2Y5M, Knin, HR 44�N 16�E
http://www.quitbuddies.org
Quote 5751 of 9162:
... Cache me if you can . . .
Jef.
Berlin was divided in that way.
I remember many happy trips to Berlin, and a fabulous day at the zoo.
We were living in New York when the Wall went up. I remember seeing coverage
of it on TV. I remember finding my mother crying one day, with the newspaper
in her hands, trembling. When I asked her what was wrong, she told me about
young Peter Fechter. He was an 18 year old kid who, along with a friend,
sprinted for freedom and attempted to cross to the West. This was before the
Wall became the monstrous, complex series of obstacles it would eventually
morph into, and was mostly cinder blocks and barbed wire. They got close,
and guards opened fire on them. His pal was shot, but made it across. Peter
was shot several times and fell short of the Wall.
He lay wounded, crying out for help for nearly an hour before he bled to
death. Nobody went to his aid. Nobody. My mother was a nurse, and a caring
woman, and it seemed to break her heart, this horrible business being
personalized and reduced to the story of a single, helpless boy. I remember
her saying "An hour... Jesus! And everyone just... watched!" It was hard for
me to process that, as a kid. His was only one story of the awful toll the
Wall took on so may people. More than 100 others died trying to cross.
In 1989, when it came down, I saw it happening on TV. I remembered my mother
reading that story in the paper 27 years earlier, and I sat there and
watched people smash at it with hammers and pull chunks of it down with
their hands. I cried for Peter Fechter and everyone else whose life was
twisted and ruined by that abomination.
Perspective's a strange and marvelous thing, no? By comparison with Peter--
and hundreds of thousands of other East Berliners-- I've never really had
any major hardship in my life, have I?
Gela
> The Guards on the Berlin Wall gave up guarding the wall and the world
> changed. Where were you?
>
that. I came home around 9 p.m. and went straight to bed. The next
morning, while preparing breakfast, I switched on the radio and heard
them speak about "dramatic moments", "party atmosphere", "strangers
hugging each other" and "people dancing on top of the wall". It took
quite some time until something dawned me. I woke up my husband saying
that something was going on and maybe the wall was open, and he said
that was impossible. But when we went on the balcony of our apartment
we saw a huge crowd of people coming out of the nearby train station
who walked towards the center of West Berlin. The world was upside
down in Berlin for many weeks and months after that. And that was only
the beginning. I felt undeservingly happy and proud to have lived to
that moment in history.
And that feeling is still there. Whenever I ride through the
Brandenburg Gate on my bike or when I go shopping or to the most
fantastic opera house. I still can't believe how lucky we are!
Gela
7y1m3w
BessieBee
>The Guards on the Berlin Wall gave up guarding the wall and the world
>changed. Where were you?
I was living in Florida. My son was 7 months old. I remember
thinking the joy of those in Berlin was almost palpable and being very
happy that my son would not grow up during a "cold war."
Things are not necessarily better in the world now, but those days
made the world smile.
--
BessieBee
Leslie
OOF :-)
"My face, I don't mind it because I am behind it.
It's the folks out front that get the jolt."
~My Grandma, 1898-1981~
Sue
Thank you so much for sharing your personal experience. What a time
that must have been for you. Reading your reminiscence brings tears.
Sue
Sue
I'm so glad to read your and Carmen's accounts. Thank you for
sharing!
Sue
FlatIronMike
more interesting since they were there and not just looking at a TV
going 'golly gee'. I had studied in Vienna while in college and
traveled to Budapest and Prague and knew how sad and depressed the
places looked. I never made it to the DDR but I do suspect that was
true there as well. While the opening of the Wall changed everything,
I do think it was not a win for capitalism but rather a repudiation to
repression.
FlatironMike
Two years, eight months, four weeks, two days, 18 hours, 32 minutes
and 35 seconds. 20075 cigarettes not smoked, saving $6,022.38. Life
saved: 9 weeks, 6 days, 16 hours, 55 minutes.
Bill
"FlatIronMike" <flatiro...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:af07d9e8-fcdb-4c8a...@p35g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
> changed. Where were you?
>
> I remember seeing the footage of people streaming into West Berlin and
> the joy for everyone there!
>
overnight as so many headed to the west. Those who remained either partied
all night, watched the events unfolding on TV, and I joined in the invasion
of the local Stasi headquarters. My file, as an Englishman living in East
Germany, made surprising reading.
Bill
uk
One year, nine months, two weeks, five days, 23 hours, 21 minutes and 52
seconds. 19769 cigarettes not smoked, saving �1,976.79. Life saved: 9 weeks,
5 days, 15 hours, 25 minutes.
Eldon
I was taken on an excursion to East Germany by West German friends a
few years after the wall came down -- not to Berlin, but a city near
Hamburg across the former border. It was surreal. A decrepit museum, a
closed fur shop with a single rabbit skin in the window, and a new
McDonalds down the street, which was torn up to lay new electrical
conduits. And best of all, a little brass band in the park comprised
of Russian soldiers playing American songs, trying to ingratiate
themselves with the local populace. Apparently they had chosen to stay
there rather than return home.
Clams Canino
"Jef." <j...@quitbuddies.org> wrote in message
news:hda4ue$t10$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
> We lived in Germany when I was a kid-- well before the Wall, and before
> Berlin was divided in that way.
> I remember many happy trips to Berlin, and a fabulous day at the zoo.
I'm curious... since you said "well before" do you mean as far back as the
days of Nazi Germany ?
-W