Berlin Wall

This, as I'm sure you know, is what's left of the Berlin wall. Should you want to know lots and lots of details, you can Google for them. In the meantime, I will provide you with a compressed version:

After WW2 ended, Germany was divided into zones, one zone for each of the main Allied countries: France, UK, US, and the Soviet Union. As well, the city of Berlin (which lay entirely in the Soviet potion of Germany), was also split. This essentially made an Allied island in the middle of the Soviet, well, lake.

After Germany was split, about 2.6 million East Germans left to go to West Germany. In Berlin 1.6 million alone left to the west. To stop this, the Communist goverment of East Germany built a wall separating East and West Berlin.

The wall was built to keep the country's people in, although the goverment said it was to keep capitalism out.

In the 28 years of its existence, between 125 and 206 people were killed while trying to cross the Berlin wall.

And if you think to yourself - "That wall doesn't look so big, I could jump that", consider what was around the wall.

Here's what it was made of:

1. Concrete wall/ wire fence.
2. Signalling system in the floor, which would cause an alarm to be sounded when touched.
3. Contact wire fence with barbed wire fence, taller than a man.
4. Dogs. Angry dogs!
5. Equipment and trenches to stop vehicles and tanks.
6. Watchtowers (302 of them), including searchlight.
7. The 'so-called' Death Strip. This was an area in which all of the buildings were torndown. Sometimes there were strips of sand where footprints could be detected.
8. Metal fence.
9. Concrete wall, 3.75 metres in height. With a rounded bit on top.

So yeah. Vault that.

This is one of the longer bits that's left in Berlin. They have had to put a fence up around it to keep people from chipping more things off, I imagine. There are also bits spread all around the world, like another 6 segments that I saw in Truro, Nova Scotia. Not sure why...