In August 1989, I visited Europe for the first time ever. In school we had learned about the Cold War and spent hours discussing the Bomb. On my trip I started in London and was taken to France, Andorra, Switzerland and Germany.
Two months after I got home, the Wall fell. My whole family stayed up to watch the late night news and watch round-eyed as Germans chipped away at the Wall and danced on top. My mom cut out the newspaper article the next day and stuck it to the side of the fridge with a colourful magnet. It remained there, surrounded by kids’ school portraits and postcards, turning deeper shades of yellow over the years. A pen pal in Germany sent me some pieces of the Wall, which I kept on careful display in a cubby of my roll-top desk.
Three years after the Wall fell, the Soviet Union was history. Six years after that, I was living in Moscow. Since then, I’ve spent more than four years of my life in countries of the former Soviet Union (Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) and the former Communist Eastern Bloc (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia).
The Fall of the Berlin Wall has affected me personally in countless ways, from the history I’ve studied to the languages I’ve learned and the wonderful people I’ve met along the way. My eyes still get wet when I watch the TV footage from twenty-five years ago.
But I’ve never been to Berlin. I will go there one day, and I can’t wait.
a section of the Berlin Wall on display in Montreal. Can you guess which side faced East?
Jill in Wonderland 