I remember it as if it was yesterday. November 9th, 1989. I got home from school in the early afternoon and after lunch I was just getting ready for soccer practice when I turned on the TV and saw what was going on in Berlin. The Fall of the Wall was reality, although people there and people everywhere could not yet believe it. The same was true for me. I remembered the various trips we had taken to East Germany to visit friends in a very remote corner of Saxony. Hours and hours were spent at the border separating the two German countries. I had never known anything else. I was born in 1971 and when I grew up it was just normal that there was West Germany and East Germany. Reunification had never really been on the agenda for me and I could not imagine what it would mean for the two countries. But it was there - on TV and in reality. I wanted to go to my practice but my mother said: "I think you should stay at home and watch this. It is much more important than your soccer and you might never see anything like this again. People have been waiting for this moment for decades now and you are among the lucky ones who can watch it today. Stay and watch it or you will regret it later." And again, my mother was right. It was amazing to see how people were mounting the wall, an act so outrageous that a few days earlier they would have been shot for it. People dancing on the symbol of the Cold War, dancing on the symbol of the separation of the two German states. The East and the West finally meeting in the middle, right in the heart of Berlin. I was tempted to go to Berlin which is 500 kilometers away from where I used to live in Germany. But there were so many people there already that it would have been very hard to even get there. Also, there was still an ounce of doubt. Can it be for real? Is it possible that this is the end of the Wall? Or will the East German border troops open fire and crush it all? They didn't after all and it was the end of the wall.

I went to Berlin exactly three months after this. The Wall was still there, but it had holes and people from all parts of the world came to get a piece of the famous Berlin Wall. The word "woodpecker" was soon changed into "wallpecker" and thousands of people came to Berlin to get their piece of history. I have moved four times since 1989 and I have taken the box with the pieces of the Berlin Wall with me four times. Other expats living and working in Central Asia have similar memories concerning the Fall of the Wall. Ken Maskall, UNICEF representative in Bishkek, was studying in London 10 years ago and remembers how his friends asked him to join them and go to Berlin to celebrate. He was in the midst of his final exams, so he could not go. But he, just like myself, was tempted to go and join in with thousands and thousands of people around the Brandenburg Gate. Ken Maskall also has a box with pieces of the Wall at home and says that he thinks German reunification proved to be a lot more complicated than expected by most people in these hours of joy. "West Germany would be far ahead in terms of economy by now. With the enormous burden to finance the German reunification, they have encountered many problems and their economy has suffered tremendously." Maskall also remembers that he had the same doubts I had back in 1989. "Sure, there was a build up to this scenario with East Germans leaving the country via Hungary and Austria, but I never expected it to happen so fast. And when it did happen, I thought the Soviets might still step in. I am glad they didn't!" Today, 10 days later, the one thing worrying Maskall is the growing nationalism in East Germany. Hardly anybody in Germany, as well in the West as in the East, had expected what was happening in '89. Kathleen Samuel, Human Dimension Officer for the OSCE in Osh, was in Germany as an exchange student a few years before the Wall came down. She spent her time there near Essen in West Germany and remembers how her host family told her: "The Wall will never fall." Samuel does not remember exactly what she first thought when she saw the pictures of the celebrations on TV, but one of the first things that came to her mind was this quote from her host parents and how wrong they were.

bChed Flego, Project Director with IFES (International Foundation for Election Systems) in Bishkek, also did not imagine that the Wall could fall so quickly. He was sitting in his Melbourne office at the other end of the world in Australia and was stunned by what was going on in Berlin. "I remember all the discussions about people being shot while they were trying to cross the border and climb the wall, and now people from East and West met right there. I think it was a wonderful moment and I also think that the growing together of the two German states is working really well." Flego adds: "The Germans had the resources, the political will and the political skills to deal with this delicate task. And their leaders were successful in putting it to the people that it is a social objective worth achieving. I think there are only a few countries in the world which could have accomplished that without bloodshed."
Despite all the problems that came up in the last ten years and the fact that the reunification of East and West Germany has not yet been accomplished to the full extent, the international community agrees that this event, the Fall of the Wall in November 1989, has changed the world tremendously and that it is a sign for everybody that borders and wall cannot separate people forever.

*Chris Schuepp is Country Director for Internews Network in the Kyrgyz Republic

This was published in the Times of Central Asia in October 2000.