Berlino 25 anni dopo: si sono alzati altri muri nel frattempo.

These days there has been a flashy and colourful partying in Berlin commemorating and cellebrating the 25th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Sights and sounds of the city . All behind the Brandenburg Gate, a lot of chanting, singing, music, dancing all choreographed together with sausages, sauerkraut and hotdog peeping out of two long rolls of bread being munched by the attendants of the feast and washed down with the smooth velvet german beer of diverse brands. A place you would like to be and an event you wouldn’t want to miss. That was the picture of the festa in Berlin.

Gorbachev was the main character and guest of honour in the square packed of ordinary people and dignitaries from all over the world for the occasion. The standing ovation given to him is the least for the courage he had in ‘‘tearing the wall down’’. Mr. Ronald Reagan’s call on him to tear the wall down is still echoing in our hears. Both of them didn’t quite know what the outcome of that famous request from Reagan and that Gorbachev’s audacious barring of the axing of the wall into pieces by the protesters from both sides of the wall, east and west, would historically carry with it. We were all excited and we were right to be. I jumped into the first possible plane and roamed both the east and the west of the city. The Checkpoint Charlie then became an ordinary simulation with easy crossing. Of course I came back with my own piece of the wall. I was careful enough to buy the official piece from the government workers who were in charge. At least I would like to believe it is genuine and not just a piece of rock picked up from the ground.

Thanks to the fact that the wall is down physically, the European Union became a reality and many other walls came tumbling after. We now have some eastern countries who are already members and some are still knocking at the doors for a full membership of this Union which has literally changed the lifestyle of all of us in Europe.

Having said that, we are now facing a new ‘‘wall’’. The virtual one. Countries like Ukraine is in conflict with the old Russian colony, with Vladimir Putin who is indirectly aiding the separatist in carrying out referendum which we all know is staged. We are still waiting to know why a commercial plane should be shot down with its hundreds of passengers just because it was flying across an area under Russian invasion. The virtual wall rises with the sanctioning and the trade threats between Putin and the rest of the the west – EU and USA. The same virtual wall is widening the diplomatic distance between The USA and China. The only agreement the two giants were able to make was the latest at the APEC meeting, and that was the reduction of the carbon emissions of which they are both the worst producers.

The virtual wall between South Korea and the rest of the world is becoming higher day in day out, though some American citizens were just released from South Korean prison following the letter written by Barack Obama to Kim Jong-il. The wall separating the Palestinians and the Israelites is so high today that you need to point your nose to the sky to see its peak. Communications are cut off between the bigs of today’s world which is a paradox compared to how easy social networking connect peoples of different political believes, ideological creeds though from different countries and continents.

So, even though we are happy and we cellebrate the breaking down of the Berlin wall, many other virtual walls are still up and rising in the rest of our geopolitical world of today.

Enjoy!