As long as I’ve lived in West Berlin, I have treated the structure that is considered a state border over there and a tourist attraction over here as simply an inconvenience. For the first time now, I decide to visit the Wall. I see a tour group climb out of a bus and then take the stairs to the lookout tower. Up top, a few of them put binoculars to their eyes and begin waving. What they see is a tour group on the other side of the Wall just climbing out of a bus run by the same travel agency. They wave back, and people in both groups now train their sights on the watchtower standing between them. What they see there, once they’ve focused their glasses, are glasses just being focused.
~ Peter Schneider, The Wall Jumper
With all these Russian spies in the news, is anyone else thinking about those late days of the Cold War & and the Wall, and how much they still matter to who you are and how you think of the world? Maybe it’s only me, because I happened to watch this on PBS the other night.