Since it is the 20th Ann of the Berlin Wall coming down. I just wanted to see if people would be interesting in writing what they remember of that day.

I myself was only 10 years old and I have a vivid image of my mother sitting in the kitchen watching the news a very small tv set in the corner of the room, watching people come over the wall... I cant believe it has been 20 years already...

I think i slept. Stupid hibernation
really, next day i noticed that something was different. i went the whole day like yeah,suuure...


[i wonder how many ppl here think now "whats that about? which wall?"]

I remember watching this with my parents.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjWDrTXMgF8

of then President Reagan nearly two years earlier giving the speech and saying

now HE was a Presidential Cowboy!

As for the actual wall falling, I remember as a 17yr old... also watching it on t.v. and listening to Pink Floyd The Wall as it happened.
Thinking what a great day for everyone that was.

I remember thinking I was living in science fiction times.

I remember thinking...once came in handy...then I didn't think for a while...then I was confused...

Were we talking about Humpty Dumpty or Humpty Hump?

I forgot.

*hands pharaoh back his dropped Archie and Veronica comic*

Its ok, DP, just sit quietly and read.

I don't remember the wall coming down but the restrictions of travel coming to an end. If I remember correctly the goverment of East Germany resigned a few days earlier. Once the guards disappeared people started to vent their anger and fustration and literally started to knock down the wall.

My feelings were basically mixed happy of course but also sad for the number of people who died during the twenty eight years trying to cross into the West.

The USSR was slowly going broke in an arms race that they could not win and this ultimately led to the dismantling of the USSR a few years later.

Obviously a major historical event that took place in our lifetime.

If I may add, John F. Kennedy's words at the Brandenburg Gate in June 1963 a few months before his assasination.

I am proud to come to this city as the guest of your distinguished Mayor, who has symbolized throughout the world the fighting spirit of West Berlin. And I am proud to visit the Federal Republic with your distinguished Chancellor, who for so many years has committed Germany to democracy and freedom and progress, and to come here in the company of my fellow American, General Clay, who has been in this city during its great moments of crisis and will come again if ever needed.

Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was "civis Romanus sum." Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner."

I appreciate my interpreter translating my German!

There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the Free World and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it's true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. "Laßt sie nach Berlin kommen." Let them come to Berlin! Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us. I want to say, on behalf of my countrymen, who live many miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, who are far distant from you, that they take the greatest pride that they have been able to share with you, even from a distance, the story of the last eighteen years. I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for eighteen years that still lives with the vitality and the force and the hope and the determination of the city of West Berlin.

While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system, for all the world to see, we take no satisfaction in it. For it is, as your Mayor has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.

What is true of this city is true of Germany--real, lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice. In eighteen years of peace and good faith, this generation of Germans has earned the right to be free, including the right to unite their families and their nation in lasting peace, with goodwill to all people. You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you, as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.

Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one, and this country, and this great Continent of Europe, in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner."


- John F. Kennedy

Can't say I remember anything, seeing as I was born 2 months before it came down.

I was a senior in high school and I remember a bunch of pundits panicking that the German reunification was happening too fast. They said it would destabilize the entire region and were insinuating that a civil war would happen in Germany.