It is exactly 27 years since I began working in the Parliamentary Library of NSW on 29th November 1982, but the memories of the Velvet Revolution of 1989 - the seven years difference blends into abyss ...

Schabowski shrugged and the Berlin Wall came tumbling down ... A night never to forget Ritter took his camera along the Death Strip... Daniel Johnson was there, and asked Schabowski a crucial question... Some Ossis would bring back the GDR, if they could: no surprise there... Whom do we credit? CIA? Dissidents? Ronald Reagan? There was no single cause... Some walls remain in the mind... It was Reagan and Gorbachev
... Hour by hour, history was being made... Germans still grope to understand what happened ... The fall of the Wall was years in the making Victor, what are you doing here? It’s midnight and you live in East Berlin
... Berlin today is “poor but sexy... For West Berliners, the world suddenly had no edge... After collapse, jubilation, fear, and uncertainty
... The Wall made for many great escapes... No, it was not about bananas
... At the Bornholmer bridge, a vast tide of people, in tears, stunned... Life will never be the same, say East Germans.. visiting U.S. presidents have left an outsize footprint on Berlin... There have been missed opportunities... The Stasi destroyed the most ordinary trust between people... There was life beyond the gray cement certainties of Stalinism... Not all lands in the East are doing well today... Angela Merkel was excited, but still stayed in the sauna

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Sadly my brother in law, Eva's Franto passed away today and will not able to celebrate this year the fall of the wall ...

Exactly 20 years ago from today, on 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev crossed a former fortified border on Monday to cheers of "Gorby! Gorby!" as a throng of grateful Germans recalled the night 20 years ago that the Berlin Wall gave way to their desire for freedom and unity. Merkel lauds Gorbachev on Berlin Wall anniversary

The wall's 1989 fall remains a miracle Putin nostalgic for days as spy in East Germany but still not craving for truth
It's 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, which split not only the city, but also the world and the KGB

Russia's Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, says he feels nostalgia for the former East Germany, recalling with fondness his five years as a KGB agent in Dresden. Mr Putin said in an interview with the NTV channel on Sunday that he had good memories of his 1985-90 posting in the city that included learning German, excursions to the mountains and contacts with his East German counterparts.
I still remember this warmth and cordiality. I am very thankful for this. In this respect there is some feeling of nostalgia. feeling of nostalgia.

• Putin Putting KGB first [ I saw the fall of the Berlin Wall; The Curtain Of Silence - If there is an element of truth in the saying that blood talks louder than words ... then I swam across the Iron Curtain ; Googling on the Wall ]
• · Remarks by world leaders and dignitaries attending the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall Wall Recalling ; The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 transformed not only Germany, but changed the world and put an end to fears of a nuclear holocaust between the then Soviet Union and the USA. Berlin was not the only city where celebrations were held for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall
• · · Remembering 20th anniversary of Velvet Revolution Limerick felt exotic compared to rural Wicklow when I was growing up but then I went to Czechoslovakia ; After the Wall
• · · ·There was a universal demand for independent, reliable news and information. Everyone I met despised state-controlled propaganda. They craved truth. There are lessons in this for the promotion of human rights and democracy today. Berlin Wall's Lessons For Today; The 1989 revolution has its unforgettable images, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, and its famous figures - Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel and Mikhail Gorbachev. The man who opened the Iron Curtain
• · · · · Hammer-wielding souvenir-hunters Berlin's love affair with freedom ; The data from Freedom in the World, the annual report on the state of global freedom published by Freedom House, give vivid evidence of the degree of change. Lessons ;
In Praise of Unsung Heroes As a wet-behind-the-ears movie reviewer I discovered an obscure book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), by then-relatively unknown novelist James Agee. Non-fiction, utterly so, his 428-page magnus opus depicting realism was prefaced by soul-etching photographs of dirt-poor cotton tenant farmers in the Depression era as taken by award-winning Fortune photographer Walker Evans. Some there will be who have no memorial . . . But their righteousness hath not been forgotten