Track 42

Track 42.

Actually, I can talk about a historical event that I witnessed in person in my country.

It happened in November 1989, when I was just a young boy, about 10 years old.

All my life there had been a wall dividing our city, and our country, into East and West.

I often saw the wall when I went around town with my family or friends.

It was a fact of life.

I never expected it to come down in my lifetime, but I often wondered what it would have been like to live on the other side.

As I lived on the Western side, I had been on the other side several times, but I knew that my aunt and my cousins, who lived in the East, were not allowed to come over to our side.

But that winter’s night it all changed.

We could hear people running through the streets shouting ‘Tor auf Open the gate!’

Even though it was past midnight, my parents took my sisters and I to the wall.

It was like a huge street party.

People were dancing and shouting, everyone was excited.

At midnight they opened the checkpoints and people from the East flooded through.

We bought a huge bunch of flowers from a stand.

My sisters and I handed them out to people coming across from the East to welcome them.

At the time I didn’t know what caused the event, but later I found out it was the end of the Cold War.

People still think of this event as a symbol of peace.

I was very fortunate to be present to see history being made. Those of us who live in Berlin often think what life would be like today if the wall hadn’t come down on that fateful night in 1989.