20 Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

I went to the Community-Global awareness workshop called 20 Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall in November 5, 2009. Before I went to this workshop, my knowledge on the Berlin Wall is very limited, just knew that it was built to separate West Berlin from East Germany and East Berlin from my US history class in high school. This workshop made me learned a lot more then that. It is designed to celebrate the 20 Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 11/9/1989. The wall were separated the west and East Berlin for 28 years! Many history, political professors and adults came to this workshop. Many of them were experiencing the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago and shared their experiences with us.  After the workshop, I realized that the fall of the Berlin Wall had a significant influences to the people who lived both the west and East Berlin. From the videos and pictures, I saw that at that day, many west peoples were standing on the Berlin Wall, looking over to the east and walking to the other side of the Berlin for the first time! That image is very impressive to me! The art work on the wall and the Brandenburg Gate are impressive too. In fact, I learned that the decision of making the wall down in 1989 was from a speech mistake. And the Tiananmen Square Massacre also played a role in this event. In addition, I learned that there are many perspectives on the view of the fall of the Berlin wall, not every one was happy about his decision. One of the views is that some East Berlin people actually think that put up the wall protected themselves. The fall of the wall may increase the unemployment in the east. Many others think that it is a great thing, many young people’s life were changed because of the fall of the Berlin wall, that they can go to a artistic school, learning music, art, acting and others. The event provided them freedom and opportunity. I also learned the “consumer revolution” as a result of the fall of the Berlin wall. This is a very interesting and inspiration workshop that increased my knowledge about the world!