Unter den Linden

After 10 great days in Copenhagen, Berlin greeted me with open arms: endless train cancellations and delays... Me and Berlin didn't get off to a good start, but the city's growing on me. The Berlin I like is diverse, alive and kicking all over, not just in the centre. The centre is everywhere. For how should a city that was once split in two until not so long ago live with just one heart?

And the history is everywhere, at every step you take... Even just crossing the street, you notice a strange cobble stone outline running along the street. Many people walk past it without knowing that they just passed from the East to the West, a frontier that 170 people died trying to pass, from 1961 to 1989.

I remember when the wall fell. I was nine at the time. I remember it because our teacher came into the classroom and said that today was a very remarkable day and told us to remember it. So I remembered it, - because my teacher told me to, not because I realized that the world as millions of people knew it was coming to an end.

Today I'm trying to understand. I see small differences between the two sides everywhere and clues about how life was on either side of the wall. But as an outsider, I can't really comprehend and imagine being retained behind a wall, cut off from your loved ones, from life as you knew it.
And then again, we must also keep in mind that for the people of postwar Germany, there hardly was any "life as they knew it", because everything had been turned so radically upside down and inside out during the war, - well, we can even say during two wars in a short time.

Just try to imagine it.
It's so mind-boggling, especially for an Icelander, the biggest revolution in Iceland since the Marshall Aid being LP's being replaced by CD's.
So just try to imagine it! And tell me if you can.