Berlin twenty years after wall came down

Malaysia News.Net
Saturday 7th November, 2009

Berlin is preparing for the 20th anniversray of the fall of the wall which divided the city into East and West.

On Monday it will be twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The wall not only divided the city, but Germany, for nearly 30 years.

Monday's celebrations will be centered around the Brandenburg Gate.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will host current and former world leaders, senior officials, and diplomats. High on the guest list is former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. Most of Europe's heads of state, and political leaders will attend. representing the United States will be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

A long line of oversize dominoes, each 2.5 meters-high, has been erected across the front of the Brandenburg Gate to the nearby parliament building, the Reichstag.

"Because it was the peaceful revolution of the people in the former GDR [East Germany], but before it was the Polish people and it was the Hungarian people, it was in the former east and middle east [central] European countries," Moritz Van Duelmen, the Director of Kulturprojekte Berlin, the government organizer of the events, said. "And this is the reason we chose the idea with the dominoes because it's a kind of domino effect."

100,000 Berliners are expected to turn out for Monday's celebrations.

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