Thirty fifth anniversary of the fall of the `Berlin Wall

Today is the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will mark the occasion with a speech at the Brnadenburg Gate.

I lived in West Berlin before the Wall came down. It was a refuge for alternatives, young German men who did not want to do military service escaped to West Berlin. It was an alternative town in every respect. And then across the Wall was the capital city of the German Democratic Republic, a world of dangerous pretence. But there was something idiotically charming about the place. Pensioners from the East were allowed make trips to the West, the East German government, hoping they’d never return as it meant they would have less money to pay out on pensions.

All travel to and from West Berlin was controlled by the East and they made hay of it. Aircraft had to fly at a certain altitude, which meant they used extra fuel. No West German locomotives were allowed travel from West Germany to West Berlin. Until close to the fall of the Wall all trains were pulled by East German locos built in the Soviet Union.

West Berlin sold its waste to East Berlin to discover after the fall of the Wall that they had to dispose of it all in an environmentally correct manner.

After some years all Soviet troops left East Germany, returning to a different lifestyle than they had grown accustomed to across the German Democratic Republic. Among those who returned was a young man whose name is Vladimir Putin

The Wall fell, the world was going to be a brighter place.

All an illusion? The story of our lives, an illusion?