Die Mauer

The Wall is what most Westerners think of as the symbol of divided Berlin.

Even though it stretched for miles through and around through the city, it's not easy now to find many hints of where it once stood. After the events of 9 November 1989, it was attacked on both sides by anyone with a hammer or chisel and now, 18 years after the revolution, it's almost completely gone.

Fortunately, city leaders intervened before it was totally destroyed and managed to preserve a few sections. One of them has become an art gallery of sorts, although it too, is crumbling. There are a lot of tourist stands that sell small, chipped pieces of the wall for a few Euros but the provenance is obviously suspect since there's no way to determine if what's being sold is a true piece of the wall or just a small piece of concrete from anywhere else.

Elsewhere, particularily noticeable around the Brandenburg Gate, the city has placed a line of bricks embedded at street level to show where the wall once stood. Without looking at a photo from those times, it's almost impossible to imagine how different this city was back in 1989 and before.