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Article: Berlin relivesthe euphoria of 1989 ; Crowds throng city two decades after hated barrier fell
- Article from:
- Belfast Telegraph
- Article date:
- November 10, 2009
CopyrightCopyright 2009 Belfast Telegraph. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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IT was the same sort of miserable November weather, grey and
drizzling; the mass of humanity was large, chaotic and giddy as
then; and there in the midst of it, three figures as solidly
"eastern" as any of those who teemed across the Berlin Wall 20 years
ago.
Lech Walesa, still every inch the Polish shop steward in his
unionist's cap, Mikhail Gorbachev, still recognisably the Russian
Communist he was then, and Angela Merkel, who when the Wall fell was
a humble scientist in East Berlin.
Together they linked arms and walked over the grey steel
Bornholmer bridge across which tens of thousands of East Germans, Ms
Merkel among them, first flooded into West Berlin on the night of 9
November 1989. ...