But today, we arrived at, oh, 11am? Spent the day in West Germany. I even made an effort to fit in, look:
Anyway, so the Doctor and I hung around in West Germany for a few hours, speaking with locals, finding out about life with the wall. We had landed on the "good side" meaning that there was no communism, and people were relatively happy.
As it grew dark, the Doctor and I joined our new friend Ralf and Ingrid to watch a press conference given by Günter Schabowski who announced in a live broadcast international press conference that, effectively, all rules for travelling abroad were lifted, in effect "immediately". The Doctor then explained to me that this was a misunderstanding, and that Schabowski was handed a note that said that East Berliners would be allowed to cross the border with proper permission but given no further instructions on how to handle the information. These regulations had only been completed a few hours earlier and were to take effect the following day, so as to allow time to inform the border guards. Nothing was supposed to happen until November 10th.
The Doctor grinned at me, that grin which says "Here we are, Donna Noble, sat in the middle of History itself." and luckily at this point I was happy that, unlike Pompeii, we'd had nothing to do with it (though he later informed me that he had, in his past, with Rose, helped persuade them to lift the ban on travelling. That could really only be expected though).
He dragged me out onto the street and in the direction of the wall, where they'd already begun pulling it down. The Doctor took this photo:
It really WAS brilliant to watch!
