What a time to be in Berlin! #TEE09

I arrived early for some prep work. The last 2 evenings I've spent some time wandering around the Reichstag to Potsdammer Platz area.

Nineteen years ago when I first visited Berlin the Wall had only just come down and Roger Waters and a stellar cast were performing the classic Floyd album The Wall in Potsdammer Platz. A year earlier we'd have been shot just for being there; a few weeks earlier we might have been killed or maimed by the many landmines that had yet to be cleared. Instead nigh on 300,000 fans had quite a day.

This part of town is now a bundle of high rise smart office and shopping complexes and you'd never have known the Berlin Wall used to be there. Except you do. To celebrate (commemorate?) the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall the authorities have closed the roads and set up 100's of 'wall blocks' 8 feet high or so as a new wall. But this time the wall is not solid, they are setup like dominoes, and tomorrow night they fall! I will be there, and if you are at Tech*Ed, then you should be too.

And now as I write, there's a program on BBC World all about it.

Peter

PS is it a cultural thing, but i wonder why it's the 20th that counts. I'm sure at home in England it would have been the 25th that was the big one?