It Was 20 Years Ago Today...

Berlin, Germany - Franny Wentzel - Sunday, November 8th, 2009 : goo

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The Berlin Wall was hammered away...

We lived close enough to the wall to hear all the commotion when it was being pecked apart and finally went out to investigate when mother complained about feeling a bit of a draft...

I was a little over ten when these tourists asked me to take their picture...

You mean they can develop photos in as little as an hour in the West?

I still remember pooling some of the 'welcome money' given to Ossie's with a friend to buy a big sheet pizza. Good eating that was

We didn't have a camera then so not much else in the way of pictures so how about another one of my posts with old pictures from books and tourist brochures?

To begin at the beguine... Brandenburg Tor and Unter'n Linden in the 1930s

It had been badly damaged after The War but it had been repaired as a joint effort by both sides. In 1961 barbed wire was strung up at the border for some sort of make-work building project...

Ve didn't build a vall! Es iss just eine really tall kerb...

Even in the 80s Pariser Platz was still a desolate wasteland

Midtown 1900s... Led Zeppelin had just started touring

Colour scene in 1936

Museum Island and the Berliner Dom

Berliner Dom. Belfries took a hit during The War. The DDR took its sweet time restoring it...

...and still did a half-arsed job

By the end of the 80s the Nikolaiveirtel had been restored in similar fashion...

Alexanderplatz in the late 1920s. The two framing buildings in foreground survived The War and the DDR's urban renewal programme that swept away much of what was left of the Mitte district including the Werheim store beyond the tracks.

The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church before The War

What was left afterwards was surrounded by egg crates and a shopping district...

Anhalter Bahnhof - once Berlin's main station now a car park though I suspect it's being developed nowadays...

Karlstadt's Hermannplatz branch store. Taken over by the SS for their records and blown up during the Battle of Berlin. A small remnant survived and was incorporated in a smaller iteration of the store before being finally demolished sometime in the last few years.

'Horseshoe flats' in suburban Britz section

After reunification our family moved into a house owned by father's family - he'd been on the other side courting mother and opted to stay. I've since moved to the states having enjoyed my time as an exchange student in the mid-90s.

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