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News from Berlin

Hope for a World without Walls. Dutchmen Celebrating the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

July 29th, 2014
Wallbreakers.jpg

News from Berlin - This year, Berlin celebrates the twentyfifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall this year. In its wake, many events are being organized, with a group of Dutchmen having dedicated themselves to carry out a quite special event indeed. This August the Wallbreakers, as they call themselves, will sail from Amsterdam to Berlin and back with a number of traditional barges, carrying gifts to Berlin and bringing back pieces of the original Berlin Wall to put on display in Amsterdam.

With their journey, Wallbreakers want to draw attention to the fact that today there are more fortified border walls under construction than ever before. In the last decade, more than ten thousand kilometers of border walls were constructed in the name of national security. But border walls can never serve one goal solely. They can have grave side effects on people, cultures, nature and economies. Wallbreakers dream of a world without national border walls, with cultures and people being able to spread around the globe freely.

The Berlin Wall pieces that will be brought to the Netherlands will act as a canvas for artists to raise awareness of the significance of border walls. On the 9th of November, exactly twenty-five years after the Fall of the Wall, the pieces will be exhibited in Amsterdam, reminding people of not only the Berlin Wall, but also of the border walls still existing in our world today.

As mentioned, the Dutchmen will come carrying gifts for the city of Berlin. Not only will they bring fair trade products such as coffee, cacao, fertilizer and chocolate, but they will also take with them a fair share of Dutch culture, in the form of 20.000 tulip bulbs,. In doing so, Wallbreakers will aid in the spread of culture throughout Europe. The group is set to leave Amsterdam on the 13th of August and will arrive in Berlin around August 28th, with more information to be found on http://www.wallbreakers.eu/.

 

News from Berlin – Berlin Global