Other places in Berlin
Mitte
Wedding/Reinickendorf
When the wall came tumbling down
From the Mail on Sunday
Can you imagine being asked along to witness the Russian revolutionaries storming the Winter Palace in St Petersburg or getting an invitation to attend the guillotining of Louis XVI?
It isn't often you get the chance to watch history in the making. So I well remember the day in November 1989 when I was asked if I wanted to join a day-trip to
Berlin to see the Wall coming down.
So it was that just three days after the Wall started to crumble, about 200 of us - each having paid £100 for the privilege - gathered at an unfeasibly early hour on a Sunday morning at Luton airport. There was an extraordinary buzz of anticipation, something I've never experienced before or since.
I had been to
Berlin in 1972 on an Inter-Rail trip. Instead of leaving the train at the Zoological Gardens - does this sound like the main stop to you? - I was still on board when I glanced out of the window and saw we were crossing what looked like the
Berlin Wall.
It was the
Berlin Wall. I nervously got off at Friedrichstrasse station in East
Berlin and found myself visa-less in a terrifying Iron Curtain scene from a James Bond movie: there were even machine gun-toting border guards patrolling the roof of the station with attack dogs.
With creditable self-possession, I climbed on the first train which seemed to be going in the direction from which I'd come. I was as relieved to arrive in West
Berlin as an escaping East German refugee.
Landing at Tegel airport on our 1989 day trip, we were bussed to a spot near the Reichstag and then set free to wander where we wished. As soon as I left the coach, all around the air was filled with the noise of hammering.
Right along the length of the Wall as far as the eye could see, people were chipping away at it in a mad frenzy. If this wasn't bizarre enough, at certain points East German border guards stood on top of the Wall coolly watching people destroy their border - and they could do nothing about it.
Read more in our destination guide to Berlin.