Three people nailed this week’s contest; Matt Rutherford, Moody 75, and Ryan Mendenhall. Mendenhall, however, was the only one to pinpoint the exact location: The Berlin Wall Memorial at Bernauer Strasse.
I had the good fortune a couple of years ago to meet with the minister who championed this memorial. He was one of the few not caught up in the 1989 euphoria of tearing down every bit of the wall and actually ran out of his nearby house on many occasions to prevent wall peckers from destroying this section along Bernauer Strasse. It took almost 10 years to convert it into a memorial and documentation center and is today the most authentic slice of wall remaining.
The large wall in the far side of the photograph, however, is not the actual Berlin Wall, but a polished wall of steel that is supposed to reflect the wall and show it stretching into eternity – although the effect wasn’t so apparent on the cloudy day this photograph was taken.
Surprisingly, the Wall Memorial remains slightly off the beaten path in Berlin and is not the major tourist attraction one would it expect it to be. I found the memorial absolutely fascinating, however, and highly recommend it.