Peggy Morrison - Vienna, VA
I am from East Germany, Thuringia to be exact, and we lived all but 20 miles away from the Wall when I grew up. I was only 7 years old in the fall of 1989, but I remember it very clearly.
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My parents had heard of the Wall coming down at a gas station, and they went home, grabbed the passports and threw us kids (I have a younger brother) in the car and headed towards the border. My grandparents were scared and worried that they would never see us again. We have maternal relatives on the western side of the border and were heading in that direction. We came to a halt with the car about five miles before the border, and all we could see was one long caravan of cars waiting to cross over the same border we were trying to cross. We got out of the car to talk to the people ahead and behind us, and about four cars ahead of our car was a colleague of my dad's. We spent the next six to seven hours with him and his wife, waiting for the time to pass and for the moment to become reality of us passing over to West Germany.
After about four hours we could see the first dump trucks passing us with debris, and we knew right there that it was true—the Wall had really come down. Another two to three hours passed until the cars slowly started to move, and once we passed over to the West we were greeted by thousands of happy, cheerful and excited West Germans, who were welcoming us with open arms.
I remember my parents had the windows rolled down in our car, and the people threw chocolate in our car, and the first western chocolate I tasted was "Hanuta," and I will never forget those pictures for as long as I live.
We made it to West Germany and somehow managed to find our relatives. To this day, it is still amazing to drive down the road we stood on 17 years ago and to know that there had once been an iron fence.
