Where were you when the Berlin wall came down?

[Fljotsdale]

Originally posted by Epona: GOSH WELL I KNOW I'M THE SAME AGE AS YORICK (whooops, capslock still on) and I remember watching the whole thing on TV. It was a great day. Great for me, because as a socialist I knew that never again would my ideas be linked with the Stalinist regime in the USSR - people just made assumptions back then if you said you were a socialist, without realising that the regime that existed was about as far as you could get from the democratic traditions that socialism came out of. I don't think anyone has told me 'get back to Russia' since the wall came down, which is a great relief. Marvellous, watching the people at the wall, taking it down, and the huge outpouring of hope was overwhelming.

Are you of Russian origin, then, Epona? I didn't know that!

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Proud to be Dubbed Queen of the Illuminati by Diogenes.
Here be Dragons.
"If I say something to you and it can be taken two ways, and one of those ways upsets you...I meant the other one." (lifted from a post by Dragon Mage!)

[pBluescript]

I was at the University of Florida, going to Graduate School.

Heady times those were.

[Epona]

Originally posted by Fljotsdale: Are you of Russian origin, then, Epona? I didn't know that!

Gosh no!

Just that, back then if you told people you were a socialist, the 'witty' reply was usually 'why don't you go back to Russia then'. I guess people thought it was funny. It wasn't.



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Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Epona of The Laughing Hyenas
Proud winner of the 'Most Useless Post 250 Has Ever Seen' Award 2001. "I'd just like to thank my friends and family, without whom none of this would have been possible..."

I was living in Tucson, being a mommy and doing mommy things with my 8 year old son.
My brother was there though, watching it come down.
He brought me a small piece of the eastern side, with indentations from the barbed wire and no paint from graffiti. My mother (nice lady that she is and all) helped herself to it when she "helped" my son move out of our house in Tucson in 1999.

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Pets Need Love Too

[This message has been edited by Moni (edited 10-25-2001).]

[Fonzie Forum Tyrant of MH]

I was playing football with friends in a floodlight 5 a side pitch, I remember we did the thing like you do as kids "im england" then another would shout "Im Holland" and some one shouted "Im germany" and another friends shouted "Which one" I piped up "it doesnt matter any more" I guess that sums up he fall of the wall.

It was not just the end of the segregation of germany, but of the world, for a while anyway, the east and the west shook hands, lets hope they can do it again one day.

[Kaz]

Originally posted by Yorick: Kaz, Berlin now is vastly different even to the Berlin of eight years ago when I was last there. (Before earlier this year) You can't tell Easterners from Westerners anymore. The east is the funky part of town. The old tension is gone or going, replaced by newer different worries. The Soviet pressure isn't there either.

Quite unfortunately, here you can still occasionally hear jokes about the "Ossies" (former East Germans) and, for instance, that they can't drive, etc. And this was a border city, only about 10km from the border to Thueringen (formerly East Germany). Sad but true... and on an average, people in the eastern states still earn less, own less, have a higher unemployment rate and (as far as I know) more crime than in the western states. It will take more time until there is truly no difference between East and West anymore...

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[Yorick]

Originally posted by Kaz: Quite unfortunately, here you can still occasionally hear jokes about the "Ossies" (former East Germans) and, for instance, that they can't drive, etc. And this was a border city, only about 10km from the border to Thueringen (formerly East Germany). Sad but true... and on an average, people in the eastern states still earn less, own less, have a higher unemployment rate and (as far as I know) more crime than in the western states. It will take more time until there is truly no difference between East and West anymore...

Kaz, I hear you, but with all respect those differences are not what I was talking about. Those sort of differences exist between New Yorkers and New Jerseyers and also between Eastern Sydneysiders and those from the western suburbs of Sydney for example.

These exist anywhere.

I'm talking about growing up in a world where the cold war enveloped all, which symbolically tumbled down when the Berlin wall came down. You are too young to understand the differences between then and now. The feelings of fearful futile acceptance of a world order, and then disbelieving joy when that world order was turned on it's head.

West Berlin was for many years the focal point of the cold war. A city under seige. A bastion of western democracy surrounded by a sea of hostile communism that at one point only survived on plane drops of food. Families prevented from seeing each other. People shot when attempting a crossing.

Things are radically different now Kaz. Absolutely no comparison.

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[This message has been edited by Yorick (edited 10-26-2001).]

[Moiraine]

Go there for some pictures.

1989 - I was in last year of Engineer School. Heard the news on the radio - it seemed unbelievable. As for you, Yorick, that reminded me that humans are capable of the best as much as the worse.

Being the pessimistic woman that I am, however, I also thought that now these Eastern people would at last come to understand that our Western world was not the Eden they thought it to be, that shops here are full of things allright but that many people can't afford most of the shiny stuff in them. There's never all the good in one side all all the evil in the other. Ditto, Epona, that's what was so hard to say to most people here, before the wall fell down.

I also felt a great admiration for Gorbatchev, who had been able to sacrifice his personal life in order to get to his powerful position, and then give away everything, in exchange for nothing, not even the gratitude of the world. Fortunate humanity is, that men like him exist.

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The world is my oyster !

[Link]

I dunno where I was. Probably watching the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, my all time heroes back then

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Link
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[Fljotsdale]

Originally posted by Epona: Gosh no! Just that, back then if you told people you were a socialist, the 'witty' reply was usually 'why don't you go back to Russia then'. I guess people thought it was funny. It wasn't.

Oh, right! Gotcha! Sorry! I have a similar problem with my surname. People who have never met me assume I am arabic, lol!

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Here be Dragons!
Proud to be Dubbed Queen of the Illuminati by Diogenes.

"If I say something to you and it can be taken two ways, and one of those ways upsets you...I meant the other one."