The Berlin Wall

I came across the Berlin Wall almost by complete accident. I had not really given the Berlin Wall much thought since to my limited knowledge the wall had been mostly torn down accept for a few lengths here and there in the city. When I dropped my bags off at the hotel, I had some time to kill before it got dark, so I started roaming around the city in no real direction. Instead of turning left (the direction I had just came from) I went right to "see" what the hell could be down the road. I walked about a block and came across "Check Point Charlie" which was one of the main intersections or "crossing" points from West Berlin to the East Berlin. There was a lot to see on this corner of FriedrichStrabe and Zimmerstrabe. There was a museum and a huge outdoor area that gave you the history of the Berlin Wall. Walking down ZimmerStrabe I came across the actual Berlin Wall with a huge walking museum of the wall and (for reasons unknown) a history of the "fall of Warsaw" in WWII. (Spoiler Alert Warsaw got Malachied by the Russians and the Germans. The Polish did not have a chance). I also figured out what these bricks I would see in the street were. I thought maybe some civil servant dug up the street to lay some fiber optics or something. But it was actually a marking of where the wall once stood ( I actually though this was sort of cool).
I remember when the Wall fell in 1989 and not really giving it much thought. I remember thinking, "huh that's interesting, hey look at that David Hasselhoff is there. Wonder why he's there?" But after reading up on this you realize how the West was surrounded by a Wall and even though they were on the "Free" side, they really were not. Its like being stuck on a small island with no real easy was to get out (You had to get your "Papers" in order, then hope for the best). No wonder people went nuts when the wall fell. Over the years when the wall was up (1961-1989) a lot of people died trying to cross to the West side of the Wall. Once the berlin Wall fell in 1989 Berliners finally had real freedom to go where they wanted to go, when they wanted to go with out having to have a bunch of papers signed by some government stooge.