1989: Berliners celebrate the fall of the Wall
The Berlin Wall has been breached after nearly three decades keeping East and West Berliners apart.
At midnight East Germany’s Communist rulers gave permission for gates along the Wall to be opened after hundreds of people converged on crossing points. 
They surged through cheering and shouting and were be met by jubilant West Berliners on the other side.
Ecstatic crowds immediately began to clamber on top of the Wall and hack large chunks out of the 28-mile (45-kilometre) barrier. 
It had been erected in 1961 on the orders of East Germany’s former leader Walter Ulbricht stop people leaving for West Germany. 
Since 1949 about 2.5 million people had fled East Germany.  After 1961, the Wall and other fortifications along the 860-mile (1,380-kilometre) border shared by East and West Germany have kept most East Germans in.  Many of those attempting to escape have been shot dead by border guards.

Exodus
The first indication that change was imminent came earlier today when East Berlin’s Communist party spokesman, Gunther Schabowski, announced East Germans would be allowed to travel directly to West Germany.  The move was intended to stem an exodus into West Germany through the "back door" which began last summer when the new and more liberal regime in Hungary opened its border.  The flow of migrants was intensified last week when Czechoslovakia also granted free access to West Germany through its border.
West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has hailed the decision to open the Wall as "historic" and called for a meeting with East German leader, Egon Krenz.

http://images.google.com/images?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=1R2SNYK_enGB328&q=berlin+wall&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=S1r4SsqqMZCNjAf607XVCQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=7&ved=0CCkQsAQwBg

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The  Israeli West-Bank barrier is a barrier being constructed by the State of Israel, consisting of a network of fences with vehicle-barrier trenches surrounded by an on average 60 meter wide exclusion area (90%) and high concrete walls up to 8 meters high (10%). It is located mainly on Israeli-occupied territories in the West Bank and partly along the 1949 Armistice line, or "Green Line" between Israel and Jordan which now demarcates the West Bank. As of April 2006[update], the length of the barrier as approved by the Israeli government is 703 kilometers (436 miles) long. Approximately 58.04% has been constructed, 8.96% is under construction, and construction has not yet begun on 33% of the barrier. The Jerusalem Post reported in July 2007 that the barrier may not be completed until 2010, seven years after it was originally supposed to be finished.

The barrier is highly controversial. Supporters argue that the barrier is necessary to protect Israeli civilians from Palestinian terrorism, including the suicide bombing attacks that increased significantly during the Al-Aqsa Intifada; The significantly reduced number of incidents of suicide bombings from 2002 to 2005 has been partly attributed to the barrier;
Opponents of the barrier object that the route substantially deviates from the Green Line into the occupied territories captured by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967. Therefore they argue that the barrier is an illegal attempt to annex Palestinian land under the guise of security, violates international law, has the intent or effect to pre-empt final status negotiations, and severely restricts Palestinians who live nearby, particularly their ability to travel freely within the West Bank and to access work in Israel.  In a 2004 finding, the International Court of Justice declared that "Israel cannot rely on a right of self‑defence or on a state of necessity in order to preclude the wrongfulness of the construction of the wall. Construction of the barrier is "contrary to international law."
Settler opponents, by contrast, condemn the barrier for appearing to renounce the Jewish claim to the whole of the Land of Israel.
Two similar barriers, the Israeli Gaza Strip barrier and the Israeli-built 7-9 meter (23 – 30 ft) wall separating Gaza from Egypt (temporarily breached on January 23, 2008), have been much less controversial.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_West_Bank_barrier

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&rlz=1R2SNYK_enGB328&um=1&sa=1&q=Israeli+wall&btnG=Search+images&aq=f&oq=&aqi=&start=0

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http://www.stopthewall.org/

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/

http://www.vtjp.org/background/Separation_Wall_Report.htm

Oh, forget Sissi for a moment! Romy Schneider was much more than that!

The Kinematek dedicates an exhibition to Romy Schneider, it starts on Dec 5th…

The exhibition will document the eventful career of Romy Schneider, who by the late 1950s no longer wanted to be Sissi, and by the 1970s was a celebrated star of French cinema. A large number of unknown photographs of Romy Schneider, her film partners, and family from the 1950s and 1960s will be on display from the collections of the Deutsche Kinemathek. The exhibition will also present loans from private individuals and institutions from France and Austria.

source: Deutsche Kinemathek

Das historische Grandhotel Esplanade stand einst im Mittelpunkt des gesellschaftlichen Leben Berlins, bevor es im zweiten Weltkrieg zu 90ig Prozent zerstört wude.

Diese Bilder sind ohne Fotomontage, nur mit Spiegelung entstanden. Eine kleine Einst-und-Jetzt-Symbiose …

Eigentlich wollte ich nur ein Buch kaufen und da das Wetter so schön war, nahm ich den wunderbaren Weg durch den Tiergarten zum Potsdamer Platz – mit dem Radl. Das Buch habe ich dann irgendwie vergessen, dafür viele lustige Sachen gesehen

Die Republik Österreich hat adventlich Quartier am Potsdamer Platz genommen. Sogar das Stiegl-Bier ist gesichert – vorne Österreich, hinten kann man den ehemaligen Mauerverlauf sehen. Man kann rodeln, Eisstockschießen und auch Schlittschuhlaufen. Handschuhe, Mützen und Socken im Überfluss kaufen in allen Variationen und essen, essen, essen … natürlich auch trinken, trinken, trinken … vorallem Almdudler in Massen  :-)

Sogar einen Stand mit österreichischem Bergkäse und Karrespeck gibt es – warum eigentlich keine Speck-Vinschgerl wie in Wien am Spittelberg …???

Dahoam is also  nur 10 Minuten mit’m Radl …

Alle Til Schweiger Fans aufgepasst: Heute feiert sein neuer Film ZWEIOHRKÜKEN (die Fortsetzung zu KEINOHRHASEN) Weltpremiere in Berlin. Also Sachen gepackt und ab nach Berlin an den Roten Teppich Ab 19 Uhr wird’s spannend am Cinestar am Potsdamer Platz…

Und das angekündigte Staraufgebot zur Premiere kann sich durchaus sehen lassen: Til Schweiger, Nora Tschirner, Matthias Schweighöfer, Edita Malovcic, Heiner Lauterbach, Thomas Heinze, Pegah Ferydoni, Denis Moschitto, Idil Üner, Jasmin Gerat, Karoline Schuch, Marc Hosemann, Sönke Möhring, Mars Saibert, Paul von Dyk, Yvonne Catterfeld, Wladimir Klitschko, Drehbuchautorin Anika Decker und Produzent Tom Zickler.

Ursprünglich sollte ZWEIOHRKÜKEN am 17. Dezember in die Kinos kommen, Til Schweiger hat sich dann aber angesichts der starken Konkurrenz in Form von AVATAR und WO DIE WILDEN KERLE WOHNEN dafür entschieden, den Filmstart etwas zu verschieben. ZWEIOHRKÜKEN startet jetzt also schon am 3. Dezember. Alles Fans freut’s…

It may be cold in Berlin…but the Kinemathek at Potsdamer Platz is even more welcoming in the winter. And Marlene is Schöneberg’s most famous child…

Aqui algumas fotos que tirei ontem na festa de 20 anos da queda do muro de Berlim. Como costumo dizer: Todas as imagens são feitas com uma câmera digital, caseira mesmo. Para mim o que vale é o registro de um momento ou de um lugar. Não busco a estética perfeita. Apenas abro os olhos para o que me circunda.

Nesse post faço um relato pessoal sobre a festa.

Chuva.

O que pensará?

Gigantes.

A festa transmitida em telões.

Pou, pou!

Orgia de fogos no ceu.

Indo para casa.

Multidão atééé longe.

Havia uma camisa no meio do caminho, no meio do caminho...

Voltando ao normal.

Fim de festa à espera do metrô.

The 20th anniversary of the Cold War’s most tangible symbol celebrates the end of a fearful era, but the healing of Berlin is far from done.

One of the last remaining fragments of the Berlin Wall, near the old Checkpoint Charlie.

When you travel, you find out how much you thought you knew. I’m reminded of that as I watch Germany celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It was 20 years ago today. The confused, unraveling dictatorship in East Germany finally allowed its citizens to cross freely through Checkpoint Charlie to the west. But after so many years of living in a divided city, thousands of East Berliners had no patience for the gate.

Television flashed the images around the world — joyous Berliners, east and west, climbing onto and over that cold, evil thing, dancing, singing, weeping. Total strangers hugging and kissing, sharing bottles of wine. No more risking prison or death just to be with your loved ones. It looked as if all Berlin were out there celebrating.

Indeed, the whole world celebrated that night, and for good reason. If you’re just a teen or a 20something, you have no clue what that sight meant to those of us who had grown up with the Cold War.

Berlin was Ground Zero for the ongoing face-off between America and the Soviet Union. Our gang, NATO, versus their gang, the Warsaw Pact. Think Crips and Bloods, but with nuclear weapons. And both sides claimed Berlin.

Berliners must have felt as if were living on a knife’s edge, on a bullseye, all those years.

Now, it was over. The sight of Berliners dancing unhindered on the Wall meant that the imminent threat of global nuclear holocaust was gone. A generation that had been holding its collective breath since Hiroshima could finally exhale.

And after 28 years of ruthless division for the sake of ideology, Berlin was whole again — or so it seemed at the time from my comfortable distance.

When I visited Berlin for the first time last summer, I realized just how wrong I was.

This is still a divided city. You see it. You hear it. You feel it. Take a U-Bahn subway train from the west deep into the old East Berlin and it feels as if the spiritual temperature of the place has dropped to near freezing.

Where the western half has the look and feel of a city, the east, with its endless rows of same-same apartment blocks and broad, straight boulevards suitable for tanks, seems more like a giant army base. Any social ill that Berlin suffers — unemployment, alcoholism, whatever — is usually worse in the east.

While looking for the Stasi museum, I wandered into a Ramada hotel on Ruschestrasse. It was a Sunday afternoon in July, the height of tourist season.

The only sign of life inside was a lone desk clerk, who promptly disappeared. In the restaurant, rows of rectangular tables more suited to an army mess hall, and all empty. No waitress. No cook. No diners. No sound. The nearby bar was full of warm, dark woods, rows of liquor bottles behind the bar — and devoid of life. A corridor of wood columns, inset with mirrors, led to the guest rooms, but no guests.

You felt as if you were on the set of a Stephen King horror film, only there were no cameras — or at least none you could see.

A slowly eroding section of the Berlin Wall. The emotional divides between East and West Berlin also are wearing away, but only gradually, even after 20 years.

Even worse are the expressions from older East Berliners who actually long to return to the “good old days.”

There’s a bar dedicated to Stasi, the justly infamous East German secret police. East Berliners have made a cult figure out of their electric crosswalk symbol and even given him a name, Ampelmann.

The Germans have a word for all this — ostalgie or “ostalgia” instead of nostalgia, a play on the German word “ost,” which means east.

However you say it, it’s insane.

The German government is putting up ultra-modern office buildings, apartment towers and shopping arcades where the Wall once stood, trying to fully reconnect the two Berlins.

It’s going to take a lot more than that. The Wall did more than just physically divide Berlin. It split its soul in two.

In many ways and in far too many people, the Berlin Wall is still up.

And had I never gone to Berlin, I never would’ve known.

This is one of the reasons why you travel. The classroom, the documentary, even the writings of a mad blogger, can show you only so much.

Each week the team at VillaWarehouse.com choose a selection of travel news that has caught there eye.

Approaching the 20 year anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, expect the travel news to focus on Berlin, the changes and  East Germany

The Times – Berlin

The coolest sight in Berlin is also the most chilling. It looks as if it has been left there by mistake but, this being Germany, it is there entirely on purpose. It is a listed building on Erna-Berger-Strasse that doesn’t appear on many maps, although is not too hard to find.

First go to Potsdamer Platz — in the Wall years a flattened expanse of no man’s land and now a shrine to swanky capitalism (Ritz-Carlton on one side, Mercedes-Benz sales headquarters on the other).

The Telegraph – Ski-ing in Spain

Excellent images, go and take a look at the Telegraph

Bullish outlook: the family-friendly resort of Formigal is attracting more British skiers to Spain Photo: JAMES BEDDING

Three vultures wheeled high over the plain stretching away from the runway as we walked down the steps of our charter plane into the balmy evening air. As the transfer bus crunched over the gravel of the unfinished drive leading away from the airport, and along a country lane past cypresses, fincas with whitewashed walls and chapels with terracotta roofs, I wondered whether Spain was a wise choice for a ski trip.

The Independent – Guide to visiting Lapland

A must for those with young families!

Christmas is coming and I want to see Santa

To meet the genial man in red, complete with the full works of reindeer, jingling sleigh, enticing parcels and much snow, head to northern Scandinavia. St Nicholas, the protector of children, morphed into roly-poly Santa Claus in the 19th century. He actually hailed from Myra in south-western Turkey. Yet over the last two decades or so, Lapland has become regarded as the traditional homeland of Santa. That is partly because of the magical look of the snow-white winter world there. Yet it is now also because of the quantity and quality of Christmas-related trips to the region. Accessibility from the UK is a key element, too, with packages offered from a host of departure points around the country Glasgow, Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham and Cardiff among them.

Thats the weekends eye catching travel news

VillaWarehouse.com admin team

Twenty years after the fall of the Wall, Berlin is one of the most rich and modern cities of the world. Below are some images of this fantastic city, where the history of 20th century was rewritten in 1989.

Auf’m Weg zur Arbeit habe ich mich gelangweilt und mal einfach so dieses Bild geschossen. Bei der Arbeit habe ich es dem Büronachbarn gezeigt und von ihm habe ich den Titel dieses Beitrags gehört.

Nun macht mal euch selbst ein Bild davon:

Berlin setzte auch in diesem Jahr wieder spektakuläre leuchtende Akzente. Vom 14. bis 25. Oktober 2009 erstrahlte die Hauptstadt erneut in ganz besonderem Licht. Für zwei Wochen verwandelte das FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS™ die Metropole in eine glitzernde, farbenprächtige Stadt.

Einzigartige Illuminationen und kunstvolle Projektionen auf mehr als 40 berühmten Berliner Wahrzeichen und Orten wie Brandenburger Tor, Siegessäule und Hotel Adlon Kempinski zogen vom Fernsehturm bis hin zum Funkturm ein magisches Lichterband durch die gesamte Stadt.

Auch wir haben eine kleine Fototour gemacht. Eine Auswahl der Bilder von toto möchte ich euch nun vorstellen:

weitere Bilder

(Textquelle: berlin.de, Photos by toto)

]]> http://blog.darioalvarez.net/2009/10/22/un-toque-y-el-muro-de-berlin-se-derribo-arte-cultura-alemania/ Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:56:50 +0000 arquitecturas http://blog.darioalvarez.net/2009/10/22/un-toque-y-el-muro-de-berlin-se-derribo-arte-cultura-alemania/ http://manzare.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/futuristic-scene/ Sun, 18 Oct 2009 15:18:48 +0000 manzare http://manzare.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/futuristic-scene/

In my eyes Berlin won the prize of being the most impressive city by night. I just passed by Potsdamer Platz and i was impressed with the scene. There’s some music-like sounds in the air makes it more attractive.

Hah, das verzweifelt schon ne halbe Stunde vorher tausend mal rumklicken hat sich gelohnt ^^ Ich hab gerade 2 Tickets für das Double Feature am 22.11. erstanden! Potsdamer Platz wir kommen!

Cinemaxx.de schreibt zum Double Feature: “Seit Samstag Nacht 00:01 Uhr ist der Twilight 2: New Moon – Vorverkauf gestartet und hat die Erwartungen übertroffen. Mehr als 22.000 Karten wurden seitdem für das “YoungStars Twilight – Double” am 22. November 2009 und die Preview am 25. November 2009 verkauft.”

Concorde schreibt zum Thema Double-Feature:

“Die Erwartungen wurden bei weitem übertroffen: Der Vorverkauf des zweiten Teils der Twilight-Saga „New Moon – Biss zur Mittagsstunde“, der am 17. Oktober um Mitternacht startete, verspricht nicht nur einer der Kino-Hits des Jahres zu werden, sondern bricht außerdem alle bisherigen Rekorde.

Bereits an den ersten Tagen wurden deutschlandweit über 150.000 Tickets verkauft. Alle voran gegangenen Vorverkäufe für Kinofilme wurden in den Schatten gestellt. Die riesige Nachfrage führte dazu, dass nur wenige Stunden nach Mitternacht der gesamt Vorverkauf von Michael Jacksons „This is it“ übertroffen wurde. Ein noch nie dagewesener Ansturm der Fans auf den Online-Vorverkauf führte dazu, dass vorübergehend einige Server unter dem enormen Druck zusammenbrachen und neu aufgesetzt werden mussten”

Weiterhin einige Daten dreier Kinoketten. So hat UCI Kinowelt an diesem Wochenende 25.000 Tickets verkauft! Die Kinopolis Gruppe hat innerhalb von 48 Stunden mehr als 15.000 Tickets verkauft.

“Auch in den anderen deutschen Kinos läuft der Vorverkauf auf Hochtouren. Bereits am ersten Vorverkaufswochenende mussten viele Kinos weitere Kapazitäten schaffen, da die ersten Vorführungen bereits ausverkauft sind. Und der Ansturm auf die Karten geht weiter…”

13. August 2009

Demonstratives Szenarium zum Jahrestag des Mauerbaues am 13. August. Vor Mauersegmenten auf dem Potsdamer Platz in Berlin wird mit einem demonstrativen Szenarium der Toten an der innerdeutschen Mauer gedacht. Einige Männer und Frauen, DDR-SED-Opfer, inszenieren Fluchtversuche.

136 Maueropfer. Die Namen der Toten, verlesen von Tatjana Sterneberg und Carl-Wolfgang Holzapfel

Eindringlich laute Gewehrsalven bringen die Flüchtenden jedoch zu Fall. Nach deren pantomimischen Sterben verlesen Carl-Wolfgang  getötet, an Flucht gehindert, Fluchtversuche, Mauertote, MaueropfeHolzapfel und Tatjana Sterneberg die Namen von 136 Maueropfern.