Checkpoint

Berlin today is one of the world's hippest, most affluent cities - a cultural powerhouse and a mecca for party animals. But just over 30 years ago it was a city torn in two, divided by a wall measuring 91 miles. On one side was capitalist West Berlin, on the…

There is one story that the Berlin Wall fell when it did, almost 30 years ago, thanks to Ronald Reagan standing in front of the divided city's Brandenburg Gate with a bold challenge: "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" But there is another story. It's not …

Where guard towers and barbed wire once stood, runners pouned the 160 km path along the former Berlin Wall on Saturday. Around 500 runners, started the 8th edition of the Berlin Wall Race, ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Walls demise this November. Wit…

Where guard towers and barbed wire once stood, runners pounded the 100-mile (160 kilometre) path along the former Berlin Wall this weekend in a race with victims of the Cold War relic at its heart. On Saturday at 6:00 am (0400 GMT), around 500 runners, start…

The race is part ultra-marathon, part tribute to those who died trying to cross the Wall, which the East German communist regime hastily erected in 1961 and stood for 28 years. Precious little of the original concrete structure remains, most of it hurriedly …

Race to remember Berlin Wall victims, 30 years on

Berlin Wall BERLIN: Where guard towers and barbed wire once stood, runners will – this weekend – pound the 100-mile (160 kilometres) path along the former Berlin Wall in a race with victims of the Cold War relic at its heart. On Saturday at 6:00 am (0400 G…

BERLIN: Where guard towers and barbed wire once stood, runners will this weekend pound the 100-mile (160 kilometre) path along the former Berlin Wall in a race with victims of the Cold War relic at its heart. On Saturday at 6am (0400 GMT), around 500 individ…

Before he tells it to me, sitting at the head of his kitchen table in his modest home in western Hungary, he offers me some sweet treats and some searing but delicious plum and pear liqueur, served from a suspiciously label-free bottle. Bella is a proud man.…

Reunited Berlin's mayor Michael Müller told a memorial service Tuesday that the Wall's erection in 1961 and its fall during East Germany's peaceful demise in 1989 were "both memories that belong together. Berlin's message as a city of freedom was that "the w…