August 13 in 1961 .... the Wall was built in Berlin

[Zebra]

and in 1989 the wall was opened again

do you remember?

 

[Zebra]

how old were you then?

i was 15 then

 

[my2¢]

I was about to turn 7 when the wall went up and my comprehension was no more than communism was bad and democracy was good. When the wall came down I thought it was anti-climatic, the shock of success of Poland's labor movement had worn off and the writing had been "on the wall" of the Soviet collapse.

What was happening in Poland was most startling to me at the time, as my impression was how the Soviets dealt with these matters carried back to Czechoslovakia in 1968.

 

[whitehall]

I was a gung-ho 19 year old Marine at the time. I wasn't even aware of the Wall. The CIA was blindsided as usual and JFK sent LBJ to observe. Later on JFK went himself and gave a rousing speech, called himself a "Berliner" which was slang for jelly donut and was met with universal acclaim in the media and then he went home and left the Germans to be shot in the back for forty years.

 

[Zebra]

Berliner means both citizen of Berlin and jelly donut in most of Germany.

But in Berlin itself the donut is called Pfannkuchen.

So Kennedy was right and he was well understood.

 

[Mushroom]

and in 1989 the wall was opened again

do you remember?

I was 25 years old when it came down, and as I was in the military it was a rather nervous time.

I remember watching both that and the fall of the USSR with both hope and dread. As I am also old enough to remember seeing the USSR storm into Poland with tanks, and none of us knew if the Cold War was going to end with a sigh, or mushroom clouds by the hardliners.

Thankfully, when it was all said and done the hardliners mostly either defenestrated themselves or ate Makarov sandwiches.

 

[Unkotare]

I remember fraudsters smashing up regular bricks and selling pieces to rubes as "pieces of the wall." Some people will buy anything.