The fall of the wall
by planetparker
I seldom listen to the radio these days – certainly not RTE. BBC Radio Four are running a series whereby they look back, day-by-day, on the events of that monumental year 1989. This week the fall of the3 Berlin Wall was covered. When I was reminded of that night, the tears that ran down my face then coursed over my cheeks once more. I remember feeling like Wordsworth: Bliss was it that night to be alive, and when I saw the people from Ost Berlin flooding through Checkpoint Chatlie, that symbol of repression with which I had grown up, the bars of Beethoven’s Fidelio flowed through my ears. This WAS history, and I longed to be in Berlin, not in this accursed place working on a doctorate on a subject which only interested me sometimes, but which I thought would be my passport out of misery. That night I was filled with so much hope, both for the world and for myself…
Twenty years’ on, and I am still in misery and want, even though I got the doctorate. So many of the hopes of that night were short-changed. I look around me here in this accursed country and I see a government made up of cowards, crooks, mediocrities and liars. What’s more they’re ugly; they seem like the front-men and front-women for a criminal organisation. My dear mother was with me that night in 1989, while my darling sister Anita was still alive too. What’s more I could still walk with ease. So, please don’t hate me if I express a wish to be back in November 1989: at least I still had my dreams.
