The following text and photos were contributed by a professional photojournalist who, due to anticipated additional travels to the area, wishes to remain anonymous.

I remember the day the Berlin Wall fell. I was 17, sitting at home in Northern Germany, watching people on TV hammer away at what had long been a menacing, forbidding symbol of governmental might. It had never occurred to my young self that it was possible that this border, which I had seen on school trips and whose large signs warning of mine fields left a lasting impression on me, might ever be opened. And yet here I was, watching an American singer in a blinking leather jacket bellow his song about freedom.