Berlin really gets to me. Walking across the Potsdamerplatz, I saw what I thought was a map board: but in fact it was a bit of Wall, placed on the line where the rest of it used to be. It´s extraordianry to realise that the Wall has been gone now for more than half as long as it was up – almost 15 years, compared to just over 28. I begin to appreciate what I didn´t when I was growing up and it seemed like a permanent fixture; that what hurt people was not so much that the Wall was there but that it hadn´t always been there. Someone who was my present age when the Wall came down would have been 9 years old when it was erected (and that was a full 16 years after the war ended).

If I´d had more time I´d have explored the new memorial usually referred to in English as the Holocaust Memorial but which the Germans more forthrightly describe as “The Monument to the Murdered Jews”. It´s round the corner from the “Topography of Terror” which combines a stretch of Wall with the remains of Gestapo headquarters. Unfortunately I won´t have time tomorrow but I must make time for it when I get back.