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Originally Posted by Rainger99
Does anyone remember 11/9/89? It was the day the Berlin Wall fell. Has anyone been to Berlin - either before or after it fell? I was there in 1981 - the most interesting city I ever visited. I went through Checkpoint Charlie to visit East Berlin. I was so glad that I was able to go back to West Berlin and freedom.
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I and a fellow from Australia hitchhiked into Berlin on July 23, 1961 with a West German businessman. It took us 2 hours to get through Checkpoint Alpha and an hour to get through Checkpoint Bravo. Berlin was in crisis again after the recent shooting down of Gary Powers and the U-2 spy plane. Plane and train travel between West and East was curtailed, and an incident with an American was highly desired while Russia searched for an excuse to declare East Germany a sovereign country.
With no vacancy at the downtown Berlin youth hostel, the manager booked us into a youth hostel on a lake in the northeast section of the city. To get there we had to ride the U-Bahn. Buying our tokens at the nearest station, I spotted a train about to leave that had a sign in the back window which said it was going to our destination. Thinking the U-Bahn was like the MTA in Boston, we ran down the stairs and jumped in as the door closed. Finding a seat, I looked at the train map on the wall, and to my horror, saw the train we were on started and finished in West Berlin, but had 6 or 7 stops in East Berlin as it crossed the East German salient.
In the West, everyone was shuffling around the car and talking. The minute we hit the East German sector, no one moved and no one talked. It was a great lesson contrasting life in a democracy and life in a totalitarian state. At the fourth stop in the salient, an East German soldier with a submachine gun and a dog got on and herded everyone off. A group of West German tried to hide us with their group, but my Australian friend was flying an Australian flag on his pack and wouldn't stop speaking English. The East German soldier found us and herded us into an office where the officials took our passports and interrogated us. Fortunately, they gave our passports back after an hour and let us board another train to our destination.
We eventually got to see a number of places in East Berlin using a tour that got us safely through Checkpoint Charlie. Stalinallee was lined with modern buildings like in West Berlin. However, directly behind these buildings, there was nothing but rubble from WWII. It was a stark contrast to the rebuilt, fully stocked stores and bubbling atmosphere in West Berlin.
On July 26th, despite all the warnings from the officials at the consulate in Berlin, we got a ride back to the West with two Australians in a VW bug. The Berlin wall went up August 12-15, 1961. The Belin visit was one of the most influential in my life, as was the wall coming down on November 9, 1989.