Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Another Brick in the Wall

On Monday evening C came home with a broken piece of concrete. Preschoolers collecting rocks is nothing new, but this piece of concrete looked suspiciously like my chunk of the Berlin Wall. A historic piece of concrete that was procured through the sweat and toil of my friends Clayton and Peter back in 1990, when the three of us were in Berlin and the Berlin Wall was still in Berlin as well instead of being in little pieces in people's desk drawers.
"You could sell it on ebay," suggested Ken of my chunk of German history.
I could, but how could I verify that it is an actual piece of the Berlin Wall and not just another piece of concrete my five year old brought home from the sports center?
I could enclose a photograph of the piece being held after it was hacked off the wall. That might be convincing, but still, a photograph can be staged.
There's a funny story about my piece of the Berlin Wall. When we arrived in Berlin we had to walk along next to where the wall used to be for some time before we came to a spot where there was still some wall left to chip away. While we were walking, one of the three of us picked up a piece of metal. I'd say it was three inches by eight inches-long. It was all we had to work with to attain our goal - free souvenirs from Berlin. We got to the wall and began hacking away. We, being a relative term, Clayton and Peter hacked, I took photographs. During the time the two of them were hacking, a bus load of Japanese tourists pulled up. The group, equipped with pick axes, exited the bus. In minutes, using their superior tools, all the Japanese tourists had their souvenirs. Many then returned to the bus, but some stayed behind and took video of - you guessed it - the ill-equipped American tourists who were woefully unprepared for their encounter with the wall.
Somewhere out there is copious video footage of two unshaven Americans banging away at the Berlin Wall with a piece of metal. If only I could get a hold of one of these clips I could use it to authenticate my ebay posting.

song: Another Brick in the Wall • artist: Pink Floyd

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