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Child Item

So its 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany. Do you Remember it?

AMKC

Imagine its 30 yeas since the Berlin wall fell. I remember where I was for some of that day. I was watching the news with my Mum and Dad and the rest of the family. Watching all these people hitting the wall with whatever they could get be it a small hammer or a lump hammer etc and thinking its going do be a long time before they knock that down as well as asking the Dad why are they doing that and him explaining why. I was only a child after all and did not realise the significance of it at the time. Do you remember where you were?

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Better Than Christ

I have a very clear memory of seeing it on the news on a Friday evening (don't know why I remember it being a Friday, but I do). My mum tried to explain what was happening, but I was only seven and didn't really understand the enormity of it all.

Dr. Bre

No cos I wasn’t born

endacl

I remember it well. There was a great feeling of 'all of a sudden' about it. The first domino in a chain of soviet collapse.

Sardonicat

I was 18 at the time so understood well the significance of what was happening. It was unbelievable. I'd grown up in a world with an iron curtain. To me, the Berlin Wall was as intractable as the Alps. It was just the way things were. To see it just being torn down like that was incredible. I remember the whole family actually standing up and getting as close to the telly as we could, we simply couldn't believe our eyes.

Immortal Starlight

Just vague memories of it really. Something kinda connected to it though is that I have a quartz clock for years. Picked it up today and for the first time noticed it says West Germany on the front. So my clocks more than 30 years old

Lirange

I remember my teacher telling me the Berlin Wall would still be there when I had grandchildren. We had been discussing Tiananmen Square and he asserted with some confidence that communism in China was on its last legs. He claimed communism was never “a good fit” with Chinese culture...I don’t remember the specifics of his reasoning. So I asked if the Berlin Wall would come down and he responded as above. He had been to West Berlin just two years earlier and had shown us video and snaps he had taken. He seemed to know quite a bit about Berlin and East Germany. So a few days after the wall was opened I spoke with him and he seemed to be in denial and trying hard to hide his bewilderment at the situation. I later spoke with him again, it was probably about a month later, and he admitted he was stunned but delighted about the whole spectacle. Admitted he was completely caught by surprise. Even with the protests in the GDR and refugee chaos in Hungary nobody really thought the wall was about to fall, least of all him.

So the most amazing thing about it for me was seeing how gobsmacked an articulate well travelled adult educator could be. Just his reactions to it all left a huge impression on me. It helped me to better grasp the weight of what we were witnessing at the time.

[Deleted User]

endacl wrote: »

I remember it well. There was a great feeling of 'all of a sudden' about it. The first domino in a chain of soviet collapse.

The actual destruction of the wall was very sudden alright, even though there had been a crisis all summer in the Eastern Bloc where East Germans were traveling to Hungary and Czechoslovakia to try and get to Austria, no one expected for the whole thing to collapse as it did.

And all peaceful except for Romania at the end of the year.

Raconteuse

I love the joy in the footage

- and so many other heightened emotions... and mullets, and moustaches, and perms, and bomber jackets, and shellsuits, and stone washed denim... and the Hoff!

Pekarirska

Remember crossing the border from Austria into then Czechoslovakia. Berlin Wall continuing as an Iron Curtain further afield. Forest and fields on Austrian side, then on Soviet controlled Czechoslovakia 3m high electric fence with barbed wire, 5m mine field, electric fence again, then 500m forest cleared and watch towers with huge lights installed scanning the area. Some small border crossing in the middle of nowhere.
The Cold war in all it's beauty.

Sardonicat

Raconteuse wrote: »

I love the joy in the footage - and so many other heightened emotions... and mullets, and bomber jackets, and shellsuits, and stone washed denim... and the Hoff!

And the stunned looking East German soldiers who made a few half hearted attempts at pulling people off and then just sorta shrugged.

Raconteuse

Cannot wait for the TV series Deutschland '89.

Highly recommend '83 - absolutely superb. '86 is good but nowhere near as good as '83.

'89 will be the Wall though - really excited to see their take.

Goodbye Lenin! is a beautiful film about it too. If Germans are supposed to be humourless you could have fooled me. Some excellent dry wit in all of the above.

Raconteuse

Pekarirska wrote: »

Remember crossing the border from Austria into then Czechoslovakia. Berlin Wall continuing as an Iron Curtain further afield. Forest and fields on Austrian side, then on Soviet controlled Czechoslovakia 3m high electric fence with barbed wire, 5m mine field, electric fence again, then 500m forest cleared and watch towers with huge lights installed scanning the area. Some small border crossing in the middle of nowhere.
The Cold war in all it's beauty.

Gorgeously described. It's weird the way there is almost an austere beauty to it, but of course it wasn't. It was repressive and brutal.

SafeSurfer

I remember watching it on TV. It was a slow build up over the preceding weeks with Soviet Bloc Eastern European states opening their borders. The fall of the Berlin Wall registered as a significant world event to my childish mind. However nothing like to the extent that the events of 9 11 twelve years later did.

Esel

It is a bit amazing to realize that the wall was only in existence for 28 years.

Ficheall

Lirange wrote: »

So the most amazing thing about it for me was seeing how gobsmacked an articulate well travelled adult educator could be.

He wasn't the only one gobsmacked, to be fair - the thing wasn't scheduled for the 9th, but someone missed a meeting, misinterpreted a memo, and the press and country just ran with it

mrsdewinter

Wow. Thirty years. In ways, it seems like yesterday. Until you realise that for much of my childhood, 'Europe' stopped at the border with East Germany. Everything beyond it 'belonged' to 'Russia' and was pretty much out of bounds, or v difficult to reach, as far as we were concerned. No cheap flights to Tallinn or Krakow. We'd never heard of Croatia, say, because Yugoslavia was pretty much terra incognito. We were reared on stories of Berlin being pitted with mine fields. Every couple of years, somebody would make their escape from East Berlin by way of some daring stunt and it would make the News At Ten. Nuclear annihilation felt like a very real threat.
Mad aul times. No wonder 'we all partied' when we got into our 30s after the Millennium!

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

I was five. It’s the second big news story I remember. The Lockerbie bombing was the first.

DarTipp

I do yes , I was in 1st class at the time and one my classmates father went over to the knocking of the wall, I went over myself in 05

Wanderer78

<<Snipping deleted post>>

Was watching it on the Telly, didn't realise the significance of the event

Carry

Yes. I was there that night, at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. Most emotional moment in my life.

Hector Savage

I remember it well, I was in 5th class and was starting to get an interest in world events.
We were talking about it with the teacher and did class exercises on it, teacher brought in a load of newspapers!

No interwebs in them days - at least not for the laymen...

weldoninhio

Mods, could the title be changed to "So it's 30 years since David Hasselhoff brought down the Berlin Wall in Germany. Do you remember it?" for factual accuracy. Thanks

topper75

mrsdewinter wrote: »

...
Mad aul times. No wonder 'we all partied' when we got into our 30s after the Millennium!

Yeah. Political stuff...

THAT's why I was getting locked out of my head.:pac:
*official reason for pissing away half my wages*

Trigger Happy

I remember it well. I was in uni and we did not have a tv in our flat.
So went to the social club to watch home and away and the news was on instead.

Boom_Bap

I was watching it on TV and had no idea what was going on.

Mad_maxx

I followed nothing bar sport when I was twelve so I don't remember it at all

Recall our German teacher producing a piece of the wall in class one day the following year though

theteal

I was 6-7 at the time. I can't say it even registered.

Italia 90 the following year, clear as day!

cj maxx

AMKC wrote: »

Imagine its 30 yeas since the Berlin wall fell. I remember where I was for some of that day. I was watching the news with my Mum and Dad and the rest of the family. Watching all these people hitting the wall with whatever they could get be it a small hammer or a lump hammer etc and thinking its going do be a long time before they knock that down as well as asking the Dad why are they doing that and him explaining why. I was only a child after all and did not realise the significance of it at the time. Do you remember where you were?

I can't exactly where I was but I knew I was living in a era when history was been made. ( I know, before a smartarse posts ) The fall of communism and apartheid.
Loved it

Agent Smith

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zXiClnK8oE

Captain Havoc

I don't really remember it as I was only nine at the time. Last year as part of my degree we had to go to Jena in the old East Germany. There are still remains of the old DDR with the prefabricated structures. We were asked to go and interview the people on the street about the fall of communism. We asked people about whether they saw it coming. Some people didn't want to talk to us (maybe some about it), some people said they knew it was coming and a couple of people said they were shocked. One couple said they were pissed off as they had a side business going from their garage selling west German beer. I did a tour of Berlin a couple of years ago, they're now very protective of the wall and they don't like people taking home samples. I did a tour in a Trabant, which was cool. He showed us where people were shot and also there's a preserved section, it's really grim.