Did you hear the news? All IM businesses must be terminated

I'm not even 20 years old

However my parents lived in Communist Poland as I believe you did, and a year after I was born in '94 we moved to the States.

I was in Colorado getting ready to move to a small mountain town, where I would establish my own business with 2 other partners. Ironic.
My step-brother was in Germany where he married a German woman and they have some very keen memories about the event.

Thanks for the memory. It is one that could serve very good purpose right now.

I was in boot-camp when it happened. I can remember coming out of bootcamp hearing the news and thinking "good lord how long was I in that place?".

crazy to think about - really.

Here's to continuing to develop a better world!

I remember watching it on TV and it was quite moving.

I was stationed in West Germany from 78-80. A few days
before I left to come home I was taken to the border between
East/West Germany. It was near a small town close to Hannover.

I stood right at the very border. There were only very small
signs on wooden posts, about 2 ft high, that told you it
was the border. And they were among 2 ft high weeds.

But, there was no mistaking it unless it was at night. Immediately
beyond that it was dirt, or something I think, for about
50 yards maybe. That was no mans lands for that short
stretch.

On the other side was the barbed wire fence of East Germany.
Right across from us, I was with a lovely German fraulein,
there was a guard tower with several East German soldiers
looking at us through binoculars and holding machine guns.

Weird.

The young lady I was with said they could shoot if we
went beyond those stupid wooden signs that were very
easy to miss. lol.

I was stationed at an Air Force base in Spangdahlem
Germany. We had these ridiculous drills in which we
went into the main squadron admin area that looked
like it was a relic from WW2.

That was where we were supposed to go in case of
a nuclear attack! LOL. Can you say, vaporized?

When I arrived there, during one of the in-processing
briefings we were told it would take less than 5 minutes
for a nuclear missle to hit our base from East Germany. lol.

We probably would have been toast before we ever
got to the old building. We always joked about it. Pointless.

Might as well stop what you're doing and have a last smoke.

I was in the Navy from 82 - 86 and I remember much of the events that lead to the fall. I remember watching this on TV not long after moving in to our new house while expecting our second child.

"Moved" is a good description. I'll never forget it.

I was still learning my ABCs and 123s if I
recall correctly. Then again, I was only
5.

But thanks for sharing this, I didn't know
about this... again, something to be grateful
and thankful for!

Asher

Thanks guys for sharing your experiences. My memory of that night is quite sad actually. I was sitting at a train station in Szczecin (NW corner of Poland) waiting for my train to Berlin (I was 17 and did a lot of hitchhiking, etc.). I had been to West Berlin before but I wanted to go there again - just to see the West (it really felt like a different planet to me). So, I was waiting for the train but started feeling chilly and I though how nice it would be to go back home (Lodz - right in the middle of the country) and eat my mom's meal. As soon as I started thinking about taking rest in my family's apartment, a train to my home town was announced from the speakers. So, I changed my plans and went back home. Yes! That very night when the border between East and West Berlin was opened! Can you imagine how I felt when I heard the news the next morning?!

But a few days later I was in Berlin with a good friend of mine, taking pictures and chipping off pieces of the wall. Believe it or not - we even saw the leader of West Germany (Kohl) walking by the Brandenburg Gate (my friend has a nice picture shaking Helmut's hand).

But I would like to share another little anecdote just to let you know what it was like living in a place where peoples' freedoms were very limited and in order to become prosperous you had to brake the law and make sure the government, which wanted to control everything wouldn't find out about it. Here is a memory of those days:

I was a teenager and I wanted to make some extra money so I started working for this guy who had an illegal shop in his basement. My job was making belt buckles out of metal rods and some other things later sold on the black market. I couldn't tell anyone about the shop because the government didn't like entrepreneurs. One day I bought for my boss a book "Works of Lenin" or something like that - just as a joke (I knew how he felt about the system so I though it would be funny to see his reaction). He laughed and said: "I know exactly where I am going to keep it" and he took it straight to his restroom and placed it on the floor. In those days there was a shortage of TP so we used the pages from the book instead.

Why am I sharing this? Because I want people to know what it is like to live in a country where entrepreneurship, private property, freedom of expression and other things that I consider sacred are discouraged and often punished.

I am NOT saying that there is anything happening right now anywhere in the "free world" that worries me and makes me want to shout - "Don't go there! It really stinks!" (and I don't only mean the shortage of TP). No, no - I would never say anything political on this forum - no, really...

I will admit that myself and many of my generation dont realize the significance of this historical event and how powerful of an impact it had on the world