While a student at the University in Bamberg, West Germany during the 1989-1990 school year, I hitchhiked to Berlin and East Berlin four times:  once before the Wall fell, once during the fall of the Wall on November 9 (see my iReport http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-348546 ), once in April 1990 to see the dismantling of the Wall (see my iReport http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-350367 ), and the last time was for Pink Floyd's Wall Concert at Potsdamer Platz, on July 21, 1990.

I had a job at a beer garden, working illegally as a waiter.  When I heard that Pink Floyd was going to play the entire Wall album at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, I dropped everything and immediately hitchhiked to Berlin.  I was supposed to work that day, and I called my boss from Berlin to say sorry, but I cannot miss this.  A man has his priorities.

The concert took place at Potsdamer Platz.  The stage was set up right in the former East Berlin 'no-man's land', and the exact place we were standing was filled with mines, automatic machine guns and barbed wire, just 9 months before.

The stage was HUGE, with massive white styrofoam blocks rising up almost 100 feet on each side of the stage.  There were large jumbotron video screens throughout Potsdamer Platz so that the hundreds of thousands of fans could see the concert.  There were colored search lights beaming into the sky, helicopters buzzing, and floating figures from the movie The Wall.  Every so often the Wall of stryofoam blocks would slowly but dramatically change colors along with the music.

Pink Floyd played the entire Wall album - loud - and the crowd was ecstatic.  My buddy and I got as close as we could during the concert, drank a six-pack of beer and enjoyed the slow sunset.  At the grand finale, the entire Wall on both sides of the stage came crashing down and the crowd went crazy.  I couldn't help but get goosebumps as I thought about the significance of this place and what had happened here just 9 months before.  It was all the more moving to me since I had been here at Potsdamer Platz to see the Wall open on November 12 and had sat on the Wall just a few feet away from where I was standing now, watching a free Berlin enjoying a Pink Floyd concert in the former no-man's land.

After the concert, we streamed into the city to party.  Later that night, I'll never forget the guy I saw passed out on the sidewalk.  The remarkable thing was that he was sleeping on top of one of the huge styrofoam Wall blocks from the concert, clutching it for dear life, lest someone steal it.  Although drunk, you could tell he wasn't going to let anyone take his souvenir.

That night we slept in sleeping bags in the large Tiergarten Park, and woke up in the morning mist to see thousands of little cottontail rabbits hopping all around us.

I have since been back to Berlin many times, and Potsdamer Platz is now a sea of high-rise buildings, a far cry from the dramatic transition period of 1989-90.

-Mark Cain