After some miscommunication that lead our group to two different meeting spots, we finally came together in front of the information center of the outdoor memorial to the Berlin wall. We began by watching two short documentaries about life surrounding the wall, and the different phases of its use and construction. We then proceeded outside and walked through the park/memorial directly across the street. There was a section of the wall standing in its original spot, and we walked though what during the war would have been the space between the two walls separating east from west, where 30 years earlier we would have all been shot, if we had not already fallen prey to land mines or any of the other myriad forms of discouragement to any would-be escapees. It was interesting to learn that in the east the wall was strictly referred to as the “anti-fascist protection rampart” (because they had always been socialists in east Berlin and couldn’t possibly had anything to do with the actions of the nazi fascists). Further interesting bits of information included: the length of wall that stood along the memorial was in fact one of the first sections to be torn down during the people’s revolution that ended the division of Berlin, but had been replaced for the creation of this memorial; the guard tower on display next to the re-created “death zone” had been similarly replaced after having been purchased back from a private collector on E-Bay; and that the church that stands on the sight of the Church of Reconciliation (which was originally between the two walls and was consequently demolished by the DDR) holds in its basement a disarmed American bomb.