It's pretty amazing that it's 20 years since the Berlin Wall came down. I remember my first visit to Berlin back in 1986. As a fresh-faced 17-year-old my Inter-Rail ticket took me and my friends behind the Iron Curtain to see the anomaly that was the enclave known as West Berlin. We toured the concrete barrier, gawped at the graffiti, and crossed over into the East to see life on the Other Side. What amazed me was the strange interface between East and West - how a Westerner could travel across town on the S-Bahn, change trains on the other side of the Iron Curtain (enclosed within a sealed transfer area), look across to see other platforms in the East, and be so close to another world without actually crossing.

By 1989 I was living and working in Germany, and found myself in the middle of die Wende, the Change, as the wall was torn down and Trabants began chugging across the Western countryside in search of relatives, freedom and Western Marks. I headed up to Berlin and saw for myself the crowds of tourists chipping away at the wall. Free market economics had prevailed; souvenir stalls sprouted up all along the wall selling stolen DDR military memorablia and even renting out hammers and chisels to those eager to hack their own bits of concrete. Street urchins tried to sell me lumps of wall (pieces they had painted themselves - fragments of graffiti featched higher prices than plain lumps) but as I informed them, "Selbstbedienung ist billiger".

It wasn't just the souvenir stalls who were quick to cash in on the fall of the Berlin Wall in 89/90; multinational corporations sent their marketing departments into overdrive coming up with tacky, laboured slogans and puns on the theme of breaking down walls, opening barriers, coming together, "hüben und drüben" and other pisspoor ideas.

I'm glad I experienced this page of history turning, and today's anniversary has been an opportunity to revisit some old memories. These were ineed the days of miracles and wonders.

I've compiled a photo album of a few shots from these exciting days, including the Wall before and after, and some of the headlines and advertising of the time. I hope you enjoy it.

Other Walls of the World today