24 years ago today---maybe it seems like no big deal now, but back then? The earth moved.

[DFW]

34. The hotel probably had CNN, but we watched it on ARD

We switched back and forth, ARD to ZDF to NDR. It just sounded so incredible, we made sure that all German channels were reporting the same thing. If they had reported that a ship from Mars had landed and the first thing they asked for was a Burger King franchise for their planet, we wouldn't have been any more surprised.

Schabowski seemed like a fish out of water while he was reading the new regulations. Understandable, since he was reading the first lines of the story of the demise of his State, and only seemed to grasp that halfway through. He also probably wasn't clear on how much of what he was telling the public was supposed to be revealed at that moment. The news had been intended for later that evening, so as to give the border posts time to be told not to shoot at anyone trying to cross the border. Only the sheer masses of people coming at once to the border posts gave the guards the hint that this was not some ordinary protest group, and that they would run out of bullets before they killed everyone storming their posts trying to get into the West.