30 years today since the Berlin Wall came - here I am (a little younger) doing my small bit to knock it down...#BerlinWall30 #mauerfall30 #Mauerfall 
I have never forgotten the moment I heard the news - I was at a conference of young Brits and (West) Germans at Wilton Park. The subject that afternoon was ‘Prospects for change in East Germany’...
We had just been told that with Gorbachev’s ‘glasnost’ and ‘perestroika’ it was just possible that within the next 10-15 years the Wall might be opened and even ‘conceivable’ that within our lifetimes Germany might be re-united...
...Minutes afterwards someone came in and the person chairing the session announced that he thought we could bring it to an early close - because reports were coming in that the Wall had in fact just been opened and people were streaming across it...
...We all ran to the television, transfixed. It was incredibly moving. In the days afterwards I and other German friends flew to West Berlin to witness history unfolding before our eyes, and to savour the moment...
...I have such vivid memories of those heady days: of hammering away at the Wall, of course; of East Germans coming across to see West Berlin in huge numbers; of the distinctive smell of the exhausts of the Trabant cars queuing at the checkpoints...
...and I remember East Berliners returning home laden with bags of oranges and bananas (hard to come by in the East...) as well as boxes of hi-fis...
9 November 1989 taught me the power of freedom and never to take it for granted; to beware the conventional wisdom; how even if it is a long time in gestation, the world can change utterly in an afternoon...
30 years on, I have little piece of the Wall at home. Today, I will be thinking of my German friends, and send them my very best wishes on the anniversary of that momentous day for their country, for liberty, for our world #BerlinWall30 #mauerfall30
