Fifteen years ago yesterday, the Berlin Wall came down. I remember seeing it on television, a 9-year-old kid sitting around while Dan Rather used words like "historic" and "triumph." I remember watching people with sledgehammers pounding away at a that piece of concrete, marveling at all the spraypaint graffiti that covered the wall. Before it came down, I had a scarce idea that it even existed. If it weren't for Alvin and the Chipmunks and the episode in which they do to West Berlin and befriend a girl whose brother is stuck in East Berlin, I probably wouldn't have the same memories to the end of the Wall.

When I was in Berlin a few weeks ago, I was struck by the history of it all. The idea that fifteen years ago, I would not have been able to be standing where I was--no one could be standing where I was--at the Bradenburg Gate, weighed upon me like an enormity. The fact that if I were to have been standing where I was fifteen years prior I would have not been standing long is harsh in the shadow the guard tower that still exists more or less in its original location, along the former "death strip." The idea that I could eat a Schlotzky's Deli about two blocks in former Soviet/East German territory from Checkpoint Charlie makes the concept of ordering a chicken sandwich with no tomatoes more significant. At the same time, imagining that where I sat eating said chicken sandwich with no tomatoes was filled with ten Soviet tanks with their guns facing the facing guns of ten American tanks in 1961, the idea that any sudden reaction by either side could have led to an outbreak of war in a nuclear-happy age doesn't aid digestion well. I keep trying to imagine what could have happened if, as the tank gunners sat in their tanks, a motorcycle drove by (most likely on the American side) and backfired. With tensions that high, fingers on the triggers, staring down your hated enemy, what could have happened?

But, anyway, perestroika happened, and the biggest blunder made by a Communist bloc country occurred on November 9, 1989, fifteen years ago yesterday, and Berlin is better for it. The rest cannot be said for what was East Germany Former East Germany runs with unemployment levels near 20%. Saxony, which includes Dresden, has unemployment near 25%, and most East Germans believe that the word "reunification" is a nice euphemism for "annexation." They're probably right, too. But at least they don't have to stand in three hour lines for bread. At least they wouldn't have to, if the had the money.