I was about 8 when the wall came down, my sister was half a year old. We were behind that wall and quite a bit away. I remember the horror stories the adults told each other about those fleeing in the big wave headed east. I don't remember the actual opening of the wall, but my father likes to tell the story on how one of his colleague took a cab and told the flabbergasted driver to get him to the West, they ended up straight in Hamburg which is half the country away.
And otherwise my family tells about how in some places work virtually stopped, because everyone wanted to go the West.
We still had school Saturday back than, but that time got short and shorter, till eventually we didn't have to go to school Saturday.
When the "Begrüßungsgeld" (greetings money) was issued, we stuffed everybody into a our brand new car (compared to what was available in the West, it was nowwhere near the standards) and drove to the West. They had just taken a part out of the fence (we weren't in Berlin, so just some fences for us, deadly fences), we actually missed it, but on of the soldiers waved to us as we came back. It was so cold and the line so long. I can barely remember how we spend the money afterwards in a nearby consumer markets.
I got to visit my great-grandmother and great-aunt in West Berlin, it was so unbelievable, all these things in the shops and all the things we suddenly saw and could get.
We could visit my aunt and uncle near Düsseldorf, it was about Christmas, it two was just so incredible, all the things to see, all the things I got.
We had gotten things before from our relatives, things they brought with when they came to visit or send, but to actually be surrounded by so many different things and all of them so flashy. The tons of toys in just one little section of a gigantic store.
I'm getting tears in the eyes whenever I see documentations about that time, reading this thread made me tear up, too (not all of them tears of joy, in the frenzy following the fall, many things got torn down and discarded, things and ideas Germany might have benefitted from, but I hope for all other countries that are still separated, that they can tear down their walls, too, families shouldn't be torn apart and kept from seeing each other, where ever and when ever they want).
