During the evening huge restless crowds gather at the Checkpoint Charlie border crossing point. The situation is unpredictable; the atmosphere is tense and excited. “Let us out!” call East Berliners, while West Berliners chant: “Let us in!” On 9 November the news that the GDR border has allegedly been opened triggers a massive rush to the border crossing points. In the hours around midnight all of the crossing points stand open. At the Bornholmer Strasse crossing point East and West Berliners hug each other in tears. At the Invalidenstrasse crossing point a cavalcade of Trabants makes its way into the West, while the first “Wall woodpeckers” start chipping away their pieces of history near the Brandenburg Gate. Berlin wildly celebrates the fall of the Wall. It divided the city for 28 years, two months and 28 days, shattered hopes, tore families, friends and lovers apart. Like the couple, Jan and Silke Möllmann, who first met in East Berlin in 1987. He was a Berlin tourist from the Rhineland, she was a gatekeeper at Humboldt University. Their first conversation turned them into pen-friends, and they fell in love. As luck would have it, the division of Germany soon came to an end. The couple got married two years after the country was reunited.
