Today is the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. To my regret, now, I wasn't paying much attention to the news at the time - there were other, more immediate, things going on in my life. Nevertheless, the pictures are remarkable: the destruction of a physical barrier, and perhaps more importantly of a mental barrier, that had divided Europe for at least a generation.
Only two months before, I had been travelling around Europe by train, with friends. Going from Vienna to Copenhagen, it didn't cross our minds that the shortest route was via Prague and Berlin - these were both the other side of the Iron Curtain. Instead we went the long (and admittedly rather scenic) way round, via Salzburg, Munich and Cologne. Now, I've probably travelled almost as widely east of that frontier as west of it.