Traveling to Berlin, 25 Years After the Fall of the Wall

Twenty five years ago, on the evening of 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. Berlin had been on my travel wish list for a long time. With the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall looming, I decided to put it off no longer. The city did not immediately impress me. The apartment I rented for a week was in a 15-story high rise in the Kreuzberg area, just a ten minute stroll from the infamous Checkpoint Charlie that marked the border between the American and Soviet sectors in the days when th…