West Berlin is all about sumptuous palaces, yet in East Berlin it's the Wall and getting to grips with what actually happened. Another section of it has been preserved on the street which became divided in two almost overnight, Bernauer Strasse. The GDR kept the decision to build the Wall secret until one night they put up a metal barrier, dividing the West from the East, and soon after replaced it with the concrete Wall, the death strip with armed guards and land mines, and another wall flanking that on the eastern side.
People who lived on the East side of Bernauer Strasse had only a couple of days to decide whether to leave their house, friends and neighbours forever and get over the Wall before its building was complete. One woman was in such a panic that she tried to jump over the divide from her window on the third or fourth floor. She died as a result.
It all seems so unbelievable, it's like a bad premise for a film that would never get made as it's more ridiculous than Battlefield Earth. "So let me get this straight. A huge wall is put up overnight, dividing a street right in two? So one house is now in a completely different country to its next door neighbour? And what's this? They actually dig up a cemetery as it's in the way of the path of this wall and have to rebury the dead a few metres away? Nah, sounds too far-fetched."
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