Berlin!

I absolutely love Berlin! I strongly believe that everybody should visit. The people are friendly enough, it is an enormous sprawling city packed with SO much history! This place is really unbelievable, and quite remarkable what these people have experienced (especially say an 85 year old). A lot of it is such recent history and it is all just mind blowing. Really interesting story to how the wall finally came down. It was an accident- I had never before heard the story.

A man at a press conference was asked a question not on the "pre-approved questions" list, and he didnt know how to answer it. It was about the wall and when will it come down? He remembered a memo he had recieved just before going on stage and was too busy to read it so shoved it in his back pocket. That right there ended up changing the history of the country. He pulled out this memo that he had never previously laid eyes on. It was basically the "minutes" from a parlaimentary meeting that he was undable to attend that day. It explained that the government was to announce some "new freedoms" they were going to allow the public- travel etc- but not really allow it in the end, they just wanted to end the protesting. Well he didnt get that far and just started reading it. "The wall will come down." Well all of the reporters wanted to know when. "When mister, if you are saying there are plans to bring it down then you should know when!" they demanded. He scanned the page for a date- any date- at this point he knows he has made a huge mistake but he has already said too much and the whole world is watching. A date, any date! Ahh, there is one in the upper right hand corner! You guessed it, that was todays date, which happened to be November 9th 1989. He said "well it seems that this will take effect immediately, yes immediately". This re-played on news around the world, every half hour "immediately, immediately, immediately". So of course thousands of Berliners showed up at the gates that night unbenounced to the guards. Two little old women had the right documents to get through, so for the first time in 28 years the gates were opened. Well you cant make 5000 people just stand there so they just booked it through the gates, and almost as fast as it went up, it came down.
Amazing! To think that if he hadnt made this mistake, it could still standing and I would not be here. Crazy, Crazy place this is!