Time is really running fast. Who would have thought 25 years ago how well situated we will be today. I ahve to admit that back then I was rather skeptical. I didn’t believe in the „blooming landscapes“ our chancellor Kohl had promised. But meanwhile I was happily disabused. One most certainly could debate now, if this has proven to be right or if the country is still divided. But I will leave this to all those people in those political talk shows.

I wanted to take this chance to tell you how I experienced that time.

On the 9th of novemer 1989 I was working as a waiter aboard a cruise ship and during that night we were sailing from Teneriffa to Gran Canary in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. On this special cruise I had guests from Berlin and they came to dinner that night being rather hysterical. When asked why they told me that the wall had come down. My first reply was: „Which wall?“ Never would I have thought that they mean the one in Berlin. After realizing that they meant exactly that wall, that divide their hometown my next thought was: “ How sad that my father didn’t live to this day.“ It was his biggest wish and then it even fell on his birthday. So far away from home I was very happy that night, but probably more because of seeing my fathers dream come true then the fact itself. In the following year up until the final reunification I was rather skeptical. Back in school we spent a couple of days in Berlin and walked around East-Berlin for a day. I felt rather intimidated which was probably more of a presumption than reality. And so I asked myself when this reunification finally came who the people in the former GDR are feeling when we come and just dump our society system over their heads and change their lives dramatically. In my opinion this process should have been handled a lot slower.

So, here we are 25 years later and I think we Germans did a pretty good job and at least for most of the people in this country it is a happy day today.