The Berlin Wall

Once I figured out the metro, I made it a point to ride it all the way to Mauer Park.  "Mauer"  means "wall" in German and a section of the Berlin Wall somehow managed to survive that fateful day when the population took chisels and hammers to the hateful beast.

It seemed fitting that it was a cold and gray morning because an unexpected melancholy swept over me.  There were only a few people in the park walking their dogs and their newborn babies in strollers.  It's a small, but lovely peaceful park.  I had lots of time to walk the wall from one end to the other, admiring the colorful murals along the way.  What once was a barrier to freedom is now a medium for free expression.  Many sections of the wall were freshly painted and I wondered how many layers of paint these concrete slabs now boasted.  Behind the graffiti painted wall you can see the inner one--the "No Man's Land" where soldiers patrolled with their dogs.

Erected in 1961, the wall sliced Berlin in half.  Families and lovers were separated.  Freedom was gone.  Jobs were lost.  A dark cloud hung over this city for the next 28 years.  More than 100 people were killed trying to escape.  It was put up to prevent the massive emigration that was taking place from the Eastern Bloc.  Still, nearly 5,000 more people did find their way across through carefully timed planning and through tunnels underneath.

It started out as a barbed wire fence but was quickly replaced by concrete walls that kept getting higher and higher.  In the 1970's the wall was 12 feet high.

The wall remains a monument to freedom, but as I sat on a bench and reflected on its history, it seemed to symbolize something more universal.  As we move forward through life, we will all eventually be stopped by a wall.  Is there life on the other side?  I suspect many East Berliners will answer this question with an emphatic "yes."