socialmedian: The Fall of the Berlin Wall: My Experience

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The Fall of the Berlin Wall: My Experience

Source: CNN

Oct 31, 2009

Summary

During the 1989-90 school year I was studying at the university in Bamberg, West Germany. On November 9 in the evening I was at a bar with a TV on, and suddenly everyone got quiet, and then they started cheering wildly. The Wall had fallen.

My friend Alex and I immediately started making plans to hitchhike to Berlin, packed a backpack and got on the road just before sunrise on November 10. When we got to the East German border-crossing in Hof, I could see hundreds of Trabant cars on the other side waiting to be let out. As we travelled north into East Germany, there were thousands and thousands of Trabant cars in a massive traffic jam waiting to exit the country. They were out of their cars, cheering and hugging each other, and waiting patiently. We drove north for one hour from the border at 100km per hour, with cars backed up headed the other way. That means there were approximately 100 kilometers of cars queuing to leave the country.

As we entered Berlin, the couple who had picked us up tried to drive towards the Brandenburg gate. As we took

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