Where were you when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989?

I was in my first year of college in Tarkio, Missouri.

My roommate at the time, Andy, used to stay up very late at night watching the cable channel Headline News. Seeing footage in the days before the actual take-down of the Wall and the footage of the Wall coming down had a profound effect on me. It was a time that I will never forget. Even far away across the world, stuck in small-town Missouri, the middle of nowhere, really, I felt an intense thrill at it all; a feeling as if a gigantic weight that had been on my shoulders for so long that I had forgotten it was there had been suddenly lifted.

I remember passing a note to my friend Miriam in the math class we shared asking “How do you feel about this whole Berlin Wall thing?” She replied “I feel wonderfulllllllllllllllll!

30 years later, I am an immigrant to the Czech Republic. I have a long-time Czech partner and a son with dual nationality; own a Czech business and consider this country my home.

The fall of the Berlin Wall and everything that it signifies was THE event that has absolutely shaped and defined my entire life.

To this day when I see footage of that time, or read accounts of the way things were in Central Europe in the summer and autumn of 1989, tears spring to my eyes and I get chills at the way things turn out in life. History will blow you to strange places.

Written Oct. 22