These days, Berlin is booming with its investment in real states properties. Berliners, enjoy their city in coffee shops and restaurants (shopping malls close on Sunday), riding a bike around the city and its parks ,walking by near historical places or learning more about the past visiting their museums .
At night, it does not make a difference for offering interesting alternatives for tourists such as walking by Brundenburg gates,or staying at Alexander Platz.Besides ,artistic and music shows(usually sold out) give a chance of knowing new trends about life style,arts and innovation. All of which, make of Berlin the city which does not sleep.
25 years ago, there was a different story the week before November 9th.The wall which was built in 1961 , was in its last week of existence , but who could know that in advance?.Who could predict such exact outcome?.It was hard even to imagine its fall.
But, anxiety of eastern Berliners, was mounting high that week ,after such a long time of keeping them in a place which was very much like a concentration camp. They wanted to become Germans again!.-
There has been a lot of stories written about “The Berlin Wall” (Pink Floyd wrote a song about other Wall), much of them related to its humiliating nature which offended the dignity not only of Germans, but also that one of human being and the whole world. World leaders said their thoughts about it, with brilliant speeches keeping them tuning in with history.-
The Wall was conceived to stop any chance of getting rid of the dictatorship from within, or from outside, because as much as it was an exit barrier , at the same time, it was an entry barrier as well. Its political purposes was to impose a totalitarian view of society, based on the rule of fear. However, it follows that the feeling of fear, was in the minds of everyone living inside the new boundaries set by the Wall.-
At the heart of all, it was the decision to live up with fear as the driver for human behavior , denying the opportunity to feel what is like to live up to whatever the talents any individual may have, and how those talents make the difference between economic progress and poverty. At the very end of such experiment, the bill was paid by the wealthy West Germans.
There are a lot of lesson to be learn from this experiment.Perhaps just tewo are enough for current times:
a.- Freedom, is stronger than fear as a driver of human behavior.-
b.- Although the Berlin Wall does not longer exist , there are still others one in place, which arise because of lack of good quality education, inequality and poverty ,which keep people out of the best of opportunities available and force them to live in the other side of a different wall, but not less relevant to delay its end .-
