'No Man’s Land Essay\r'

'I tiptoe with the night, panic-struck for til instanter my sweat to make the slightest fray as it drips off my face and onto the ground. I am non thinking of everything at the moment provided my survival and how my carriage will be once I am free of the Soviet adhesive friction close to my wrists. My heart feels identical it is disruption with my ribs and protruding out of my boob with every schnorchel I consequence as I fulfill express and faster towards the barrier that has incarcerated me over the years.\r\nAs I throw myself over the eleven-foot cover w any with barbed wire at the top, I posterior hear gunshots altogether around, and I pray they are not intended for me. I hit the cold, wicked ground on the other nerve, nevertheless I am not even close to being safe any date soon. I am in no mans land presently. I would be better off asking for some superstar to shoot me than to make it out of present alive. I dedicate just now angiotensin converting enzyme chance.\r\nAt least that is how I imagined it would have been resembling if I were in trap in the tribulations of eastbound Berlin nerve-racking to scarper into the desired western hemisphere Berlin between 1961 and 1989. However, it is a gray December day in 2004, and if it weren’t for remains of the Iron mantelpiece and Checkpoint Charlie, people would not be satisfactory to relive that part of history or be reminded of the dictator that destroyed so many lives.\r\nThe temperature was eight degrees Celsius as the bad sky attempted to cough up snow onto Berlin. Before that moment I had only heard of the Berlin Wall with history books and stories. I would sit and harken to travelers tales told by my courageous father who had walked through Checkpoint Charlie and into due east Berlin in seventy-five. He told me how he had to exchange West Berlin money into eastern hemisphere Berlin money at Checkpoint Charlie in the lead enter East Berlin. Then going back ward into West Berlin he had to drop it in a rusty tin can at Check Point Charlie because you were not allowed to extend East Berlin money. He witnessed twain tourists getting assaulted by the guards for trying to import East Berlin money into West Berlin.\r\nMy only expectations of Berlin came from the adventures of my dad. I expected Checkpoint Charlie to be a barricade miles long with tollbooths that have the armor that swing up and wad. Similar to the tollbooths that point across the free paths of truly large cities, or at the airports you go through after short-term parking. Once you pass through the chomping arms of the tollbooths I imagined East Berlin to be scattered with desolate buildings and run down streets. But as I approached the once controlling surround and Checkpoint Charlie I realized nothing was as I imagined it at all.\r\nIt was like walking down any other street in a big city. A a couple of(prenominal) people who were always pushing their way through th e gaps that opened up between the wandering men and women, obviously in to a greater extent of a hurry than anyone else on the street. Christmas lights clung to the tall buildings that ran down the streets of Berlin. People popped in and out of the busy stores, squeezing their die bit of Christmas shopping in beforehand the Holiday.\r\nSuddenly the bustle of people slowed like a murmur in time as I stood right before the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie which are now ring by the commercial buildings of downtown Berlin. My respect dropped to an engraved brick in the ground that now serves as a commemorative cheek for the Berlin Wall. A chill ran from the tip of my toes all the way to the ends of my hair as I realized how lucky I was to be standing right there in no mans land. I can now speak of the Berlin Wall, not as indirect from a history book, but as a memory.\r\nNo mans land, a muniment now, is where 171 people who attempted to escape into West Berlin were shot, and go away to bleed to death like a deer on the perspective of the road. This area contained walls on either side with mines and stern East Berlin guards to make it approximately impossible to escape. As I stood in the middle of no mans land face up East Berlin, I looked over my left and my right shoulders only to see black, wooden crosses a atomic taller than I am. The crosses looked as if snow had only given them the fun of its company and nothing else around them, when really it was just white sand application the ground. I took a deep breath in as if I was trying to swallow it into my memory, making sure to keep it forever. I am motionless.\r\nWhere the median level of the road would have been, an American spend’s somber picture was enlarged and hoisted up on a gage staring out towards West Berlin. On the opposite side was a Russian Soldier keeping close fancy over East Berlin. Below the soldiers’ pictures was Checkpoint Charlie. wilt flowers surrounded thi s one room tag that once controlled the passage of people from East to West Berlin. Now it also stands as a memorial for people who died crossbreeding over into West Berlin.\r\nOn either side of me, there were remains of the wall still standing. I got an eerie picture as I stared at them. My disposition of time was completely modify. There I stood at one of the most diachronic sites imagining what it would have been like to be encase in by a concrete wall that was suffocating you more and more each day. But when I looked around I was in the middle of one of the largest cities in Germany. It was like time slowed when I was walking through no mans land, but everything else around no mans land and Checkpoint Charlie was full-of-the-moon of life. I was in my own little bubble. I walked about a break and returned to the normal noises and the packed sidewalks of what use to be the Soviet controlled East Berlin. My view of Berlin has been altered for the better, with a greater unde rstanding of the axiom â€Å"seeing is believing.”\r\n'