30 years

It is crazy to think that it has bee 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.  It seems like yesterday, and even crazier to think that the wall has been down now more years than it was officially up!  In the fall of 1989, I traveled to Berlin with my mother.  We were doing a grand European tour and Berlin was one of our destinations.  At the time, we were traveling by tour group and I remember the day we crossed over from West Berlin to East Berlin and how we were all slightly just a little bit nervous.  Afterward, we came back to West Berlin and looked across from the West to the East.  Our guide showed us the guards sitting ready to shoot anyone who did not have permission to cross over and he also showed us a small cross memorial to an individual died trying to escape to freedom.  My sense of nervousness was I am sure heightened by the fact that I had seen the Disney movie titled Night Crossing. While that family was able to escape, I knew that it was no joke.  While we came to understand things were changing in the eastern parts of Europe having visited Poland too at that time, I would have never thought just a few short weeks later the wall came down.  No one should have to live behind a wall and for my husband's family having the wall come down made it much easier and less risky to visit their loved ones.  My husband's family came from East Germany and had escaped after the War, and while the wall was not physically up at the time, their crossing from east to west was not without its challenges.  30 years later, our children participated in a celebration of the wall falling.  Winston in his highschool created a small replica of the wall and the younger kids did the same at their German school.  Walls are not the answer!  Let us not forget!