Do you remember what happened 25 years ago today?

November 9, 1989 was the day that East Germans were given permission to visit West Berlin. At that time the Berlin Wall started to tumble down.

I was in Berlin nine years ago and took these pictures just a few days after the 16th anniversary.

In the picture above you can see a line of stones that mark where the Berlin Wall stood. Today streets freely cross the old border between East and West Berlin.

Near my hotel they had a display of colorful segments of the Berlin Wall. This brought back memories of watching the TV coverage that day when the wall started to tumble.

I also thought of the first time that I saw segments of the Berlin Wall. The Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas had several segments of the wall on display in the space museum. They divided the US and Russian space craft that were on display.

I also visited this outdoor exhibit that is part of the Topography of Terror Museum. Here you can see one of the remaining segments of the Berlin Wall.

Here is the opposite side of the wall. One of the features of the Berlin Wall was the clay pipe on top of the wall. They were installed to make it more difficult to climb over.

Here is the other end of the wall segment. This is a very interesting view as it shows how the citizens started to take down the wall. They chipped away at the concrete of the wall. Not only for souvenirs, but also in celebration of the symbolic removal of the wall on November 9th.

The official removal of the wall did not start until the next summer when heavy equipment was brought in to remove what was left of the wall. However, large segments of the wall had already tumbled down at that time.

Somewhere hidden away in my picture files I have a few images of the wall between Thuringia and Bavaria. Perhaps I will dig them out for a future post.

Do you remember where you were when the Berlin Wall started to tumble?

I was living in Nebraska then.

Steven

p.s. If you are looking for information about the Walls of Jericho that came tumbling down click here: Walls of Jericho