Monday 9 November 2009

20 Years since the Berlin wall fell where is UK TV coverage


(Left: Checkpoint Charlie - photo from jmlproperty services)


Today is the 9th November 2009, twenty years anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

There is plenty of newspaper coverage over the weekend in the UK and no doubt will be on Tuesday. The news channels will be covering this and like the BBC1 10 oclock news last night have the same reporter there who covered the event twenty years ago in 1989.
There was an interesting article in the Traveller supplement of Saturday's Independent by Simon Calder who was a driver for the BBC radio car at that time. He had followed the tail from west to east in a hire car going through the three main checkpoints Checkpoint Alpha (100 miles west of Berlin where Dr Annemarie Reffert and her daughter Julianne were the first East Germans to cross over into West Germany in their Trabant an hour before the Berlin fronier gates opened and then came back again) and Checkpoint Bravo.
However with the anniversary of this important piece of history when communism was finally falling, what coverage can I find on our UK TV channels this week?



Not a lot, sure there will be the news coverage, but the only advertised documentary I could find is on the History Channel at 9.00 tonight. Maybe there have been a few on recently that I have missed, but surely this week would have been appropriate?
BBC 2 had a 90 minute documentary entitled "The Secret Life of the Berlin Wall" a documentary telling the story of the Berlin Wall and its impact on Berliners' lives on Satuday 7th, but is there anything this week?



Berlin is a fantastic place to visit and details of a few days earlier this year Berlin in February is fantastic, but can be very cold has a lot of detail of where to go and quickly get a feel of the city by taking a bus tour followed by a guided walking tour, but if you are thinking of going in the next few weeks, take plenty of warm clothing.

No comments: