Berlin Wall

I was thinking about what a wonderful city Berlin was to experience, whether as part of a study group tour, or simply exploring by myself. Over the years. There was always something, somewhere or somebody different to discover and to see. No matter how many times you visited - whether for family, work, leisure or friends. Lots of history and plenty of architectural and cultural variety. Never a dull moment. My mind was suddenly crowded with vivid recollections, private musings, colourful vignettes and a powerful sense of place. Mostly - but certainly by no means exclusively - focusing upon visits to the Berlin Wall and associations therewith from my first ever visit in 1983 to its almost invisibility today; from the Iron Curtain, trips to West and East Berlin, the Fall of The Wall and German Re-Unification. And all from an Irish perspective.

"Patrick's reflections on Berlin are superb and rich in detail - it is the layering of time and places and thereby the dissolving of the rigidity of temporal and geographical borders that make his recollections particularly enjoyable. You can really see the geographer at work, tracing the memoryscapes of Berlin and Dublin over one another until they overlap."

Margaret Haverty
Ph.D. Scholar at Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, University of Tübingen