Checkpoint Charlie Quotes

Certainly my parents were very political, so the whole Berlin Wall thing - and being a kid of the '80s - that's just something that's in your experience.

When I was 16, I went to Berlin - West Berlin, since at that time a wall still divided the city - to live for three months with a family on an exchange program.

The Berlin Wall is the defining achievement of socialism.

The Berlin Wall go down, that was the most wonderful thing that could happen, absolutely. I celebrated with everybody in Berlin that day when the Wall was down.

My father loved to take us on historical vacations, and you should have seen the stares we received in East Berlin.

The one great exception to the apathy on reunification is, naturally enough, Berlin. Encircled by the hostile Soviet Zone for ten years, at times blockaded and constantly at the Russians' mercy, Berliners are committed to this one goal with a unique urgency.

Today on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east to prevent their people from leaving.

It is advertising that enthrones the customer as king. This infuriates the socialist...[it is] the crossing of the boundary between West Berlin and East Berlin. It is Checkpoint Charlie, or rather Checkpoint Douglas, the transition from the world of choice and freedom to the world of drab, standard uniformity.

I was in Germany when the wall came down.

My first visit to West Berlin was in February 1983. The drive through East Berlin, the fact that West Berlin was surrounded by a wall that was more than 100 miles long - the absurdity and intensity of it really knocked me out.

There is something about the name Berlin that evokes an image of men in hats and long coats standing under streetlamps on rainy nights.

I find it a bit sad that there is no photo of me hanging on the walls in the Berlin Museum at Checkpoint Charlie.