East Side Gallery and Check Point Charlie Berlin

To be in Berlin and not to mention the Berlin wall, is impossible. The signs all around the city show you where the wall was standing.

East Side galery is a 1.2 kilometers part oft he original wall that was deliberately left to be painted on and to remind about a time that was very hard on people of Berlin. Green lines on the ground mark places where the wall stood. Check Point Charlie, which was once a point of transition between East and West Berlin is now a tourist attraction that gathers crowds of tourists.
While we look at it today as an attraction, take few pictures of it for fun and go home is easy but at the time of the wall's existance living in Berlin wasn't fun at all. Its presence can be even felt today, it's something you simply can't ignore. I just couldn't ignore the fact that a simple wall turned practically half of the city into a prison. All the pain, suffering, fears, hopes, and longing to cross over it and step into the freedom can still be felt like it was imprinted in some kind of spiritual dimension. The feeling was so vivid that I just couldn't stand next to the guard house to get a picture taken, without my eyes filling with tears. I wanted to cry so badly but I had to hold it in so the people around me didn't think I was crazy or something.

It is sad how in life we take everything for granted. Sometimes it's not a bad thing to have a reminder how lucky we are for not having to go through such an awful or maybe even worse experience. I hope that soon no other human being will have to go through such pain and suffering again.