Wall Falls Down

It looks like the Guardian jumped the gun a bit on its various features on the Berlin Wall (technically the 30th anniversary of the wall coming down is tomorrow).  I did like this piece focusing on German writers and their response to the fall of the wall.

I do remember watching the events (on TV) during my junior year of university.  I hadn't really expected the collapse of the Iron Curtain to be nearly as sudden or as far-reaching as it was.  I was correct in that this was hardly the "end of history" as Francis Fukuyama put it, in his stunningly wrong-headed assessment.

Many, many years later I had the opportunity to visit Berlin on a work trip.  I had to make the obligatory visit to Checkpoint Charlie.

 
I also picked up a very small fragment of the Berlin Wall from the Berlin Wall Museum. 

Obviously, it's possible that it's a fake, but, given it's provenance from the museum, odds are it's the real deal.

I likely won't do a whole lot to memorialize the fall tomorrow, though I am hoping to watch the movie Good Bye Berlin fairly soon, where an East Berlin woman emerges from a coma (after the fall of the wall); her family tries to hide the momentous events from her, to avoid her having a relapse from the shock.  It's supposed to be a good comedy, but I've never gotten through the whole movie.