Where Were You on November 9th, 1989?

Radio Berlin International (RBI) QSL, 1980s

After tons of devoted readers have asked JR this question, he has decided to answer.

JR was asleep. Until a moment ago, he believed that Nov. 9, 1989 was on a Tuesday. But it was in fact on a Thursday. So he probably didn’t watch Dallas that night.

But he had virtuously done all his homework, and was having a good, sound sleep which was very important because it was the last year before entering college, and he needed a good report card to enter college.

If people all over Germany were really as euphoric as the archive material suggests, JR and most of his friends and classmates were probably exceptions. They were very happy, but they weren’t exactly enthused. It was a normal working day. They didn’t really feel that it was a monumental day in history.

They were right in a way, weren’t they? After all, the “Fall of the Wall” had started here. Or here. Or here. If  November 9, 1989 was a monumental day, so were many days during the previous years, and many days that followed.

Tags: cities, democracy, education, Europe, feelings, Germany, history, human rights, ideology, international, journalism, learning, revolutionary opera, Russia