The wall

25 years ago, my parents often made me watch the news.    A very boring tv program for a pre-teen. Blah blah politics blah blah economics blah blah blah.   But they even had adopted a  test in their class at school about the news so that all their students were forced to vigorously watch at least some of the news emissions each week in order to pass. And my parents themselves were making vigorously notes in order to make their test at child-level. I was in the room, paying attention with half an eye usually. ...that was sufficient to pass.

And then there were images for days and days of people crawling over the embassy gate, camping in the embassy garden, hoping for a better future.  It was fascinating and incomprehensible.

And then there were many people on the wall in Berlin, dancing, waving flags, sitting on top of the graffiti.
"This is history, sit down, you must watch this...remember this, this is history" my parents told me.  But somehow I got that, I didn't need to be told. There were extra news editions until late at night and we sat there and watched the crowd on top of the wall. We saw the line-up of tiny cars driving from East to West the days after , the people crying and embracing each other and it gave me chills.  There was so much emotion in these images and I got explained about the wall in Berlin etc... I got it: this was history and I was watching it live. I felt happy for Germany. And like any non-Berliner I probably didn't get it at all, because we were no Berliners.


Yet, whenever I hear about the Berlin wall, about 25 years ago, I remember these images.  "This is history".   It was history and I am glad I've watched it from the first row in front of our tv.  And when I see those images again, it still gives me chills.


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