"A walk where the wall used to be" a Berlin Travel Page by sabsi

In 1988 we started our Grafitti career at the wall ;-) Whenever we had something to say - like which medal we won at the rowing championships or something - we sprayed it on the wall.

We always chose the same spot for this - Bernauer Strasse - a street which was divided in the middle when the wall was built in 1961. Many tragic stories happened here during the almost 30 year the wall was there.

These were the western type watchtowers at the wall - so that tourists and citizens of West Berlin could have a look over this terrible border.

One of us always went to the top while the others were spraying because we were scared someone would come through the wall and pull us onto East German ground (legends said there were doors and border police was allowed to arrest sprayers because the wall stood a few centimetres on Eastern ground ;-).

Once one guy didn't think at all and threw the empty spraycan over the wall. The alarm went off and all we did was run to the next subway stop! Very scary!

And while we looked over the wall we always thought we would love to go to the other side of the street once in our lifes...just straight through the wall!

This is the beginning of the story... just a few months after we sprayed the last word onto the wall it came down....

In 1990 we came back to the same street to see what happened to the wall that once stood there. It was a few days before the official reunification of Germany and parts of the wall were still here - it looked different though.

From both sides people had taken parts from the wall as souvenirs and the rest was painted from both sides - unlike before when of course the east side was never painted because noone got near there without being shot.

...luckily I had been there in November 1989 just after the wall came down to get my name off the wall as a souvenir ... back then you still couldn't cross the vanishing border at this point. The whole wall and the "death zone" behind it were still there.

Anyway, we jumped around a bit and it felt really strange to be there and see the streets without the wall at some parts. This is what we had always dreamt of!!

Next we walked around the last bit of wall and suddenly stood on its east side - the place where the border used to be and the place we always watched while spraying on the wall!

Standing here - in the "death zone" -only a year earlier we would have been shot immediately, this was a place noone could get through alive!! It was a really strange feeling to walk along here... thinking of it sends me shivers down my spine still!!

We found one of the GDR watchtowers here lying on the ground. The feeling became worse with every second!!! Everything was so unreal - even if the border was only gone for less than a year!!!

I am happy I saw all this and I am happy that I have visited the GDR while it was still there to see what it was like.

Here were are, the other side of the street - in the "East". Where we always wanted to go.... Without passport controls or machine guns at the border!!! An amazing feeling!!!