Mr. Reagan, the wall is down...

...at least it is in Berlin. It's been many years since President Reagan made his famous speech. Infact, the Berlin wall was torn down 20 years ago today. Most people talk about these great historical events and ask each other where they were or what they were doing at the time. I don't know what I was doing when the wall came down. I don't have any memories of that day, I was only 3 years old and living in suburban New Jersey. In fact, the only memory I have of the Berlin wall involves one of the pieces that is in New York. This is actually one of the things I love about living in New York, you can wander around or be on your way to some relatively mundane place like a department store, take the wrong turn somewhere, and end up seeing something completely random. I was headed to a clothing store to help a friend buy work clothes and I decided to take the turn a block earlier and behold...the Berlin Wall. I knew there was a piece of the wall in NY so I wasn't entirely surprised, but it was still a shock to randomly run into a piece of history (literally!!) like that. Touching the wall, I hoped I would get some sort of vibe, something reminding me what the piece of concrete in front of me symbolized, but it did't. I felt nothing special; I was simply touching a slab of concrete. Did that mean I didn't appreciate history? That can't be, I know the dates of every major battle in the Second World War, I can go pretty far back when naming US presidents chronologically, I know the names of all the wives of Henry VIII and the Mughal emperors, why didn't the Berlin Wall mean anything to me?

I've always wanted to go to Germany. I took German in highschool because I always felt like Germany was a place I needed to go, like something there was waiting for me. Maybe it's high time I took that trip.