Our Berlin apartment

In case you're curious, here's what our Berlin apartment looks like on a sunny day (occasionally, that is).


Twenty years later

November 9 was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and there were commemorations throughout the day.


Twenty years ago, Angela Merkel and thousands of other East Germans crossed over Bernholmer Bridge into West Berlin. To mark the anniversary, she walked across the bridge again, this time accompanied by Mikhail Gorbachev and Lech Walesa. To judge by the New York Times article, the scene looked like this:


Let me assure you, however, that the scene looked a lot more like this:



Give yourself bonus points if you recognized Gorby and Angie in my photo.

Later in the day there was a big celebration around the Brandenburg Gate. Giant domino stones (painted mostly by children, but also by luminaries such as Nelson Mandela) were placed up and down the street. Lech Walesa knocked the first stone over (get it?).

One of the stones wouldn't fall over, and that was intentional. It had been painted by a Korean artist, and the point was that Korea, like Germany previously, is divided, and that there are walls that still need to come down.