The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989. I travelled to East Berlin from Budapest two days later and spent a night at the wall. Sections were already being dismantled. It was one big party on the West German side but on the East German side, soldiers and police still stood guard. Three months earlier, on August 19, 1989, about 600 East German refugees in Hungary crossed the border to Austria in a human stampede. Soon afterwards, Hungary opened its border to East Germans wanting to cross over to the West. I wrote about these events in chapter 2 of Picnic at the Iron Curtain.