Welcome to Cold War Conversations, the home of real stories of the Cold War.

We made a pact somewhere, sometime in the mid-80s, we said,

we are going to spend New Year's Eve, 1990, not 2000, but 1919, under the Eiffel Tower, come what may.

Welcome to Cold War Conversations.

As threats and counterpets go on over the torn city,

the iron curtain running through Berlin has today become a cement wall.

Astonishing news from East Germany, where the East German authorities have said, in essence,

that the Berlin Wall doesn't mean anything anymore.

The wall that the East Germans put up in 1961 to keep its people in will now be breached by anybody one who wants to leave.

The German people awoke this morning as one nation, celebrating the end of 45 years of division and cold war.

Towns and villages across east and west celebrated the final moment of unification.

While in Germany's historic capital, Berlin, a freedom bell peeled at midnight and fireworks lit the

night sky over the Brandenburg gate. In 1986, East German student Ancher met a British guy who was installing sewing machines in the

hosiery companies in East Germany. Unusually, he was given quite a bit of freedom to socialise

locally and he eventually asked Ancher to marry him. However, with her prospective husband

being a citizen of the capitalist West,

the process was far from simple.

Now, talking of the Capitalist West,

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Now, back to today's episode, Ancher describes her early life in the GDR and how romance blossomed between East and West, despite the best efforts of East German bureaucracy to thwart the Union.

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