Before world leaders gave laudatory speeches, before Jon Bon Jovi took centre stage, before fireworks lit up the night sky last week, there was a wall separating east from west once again.

Created from 1,000 brightly coloured Styrofoam blocks lined up like dominoes, the temporary wall caused road closures, traffic diversions and gridlock. People couldn't pass freely through the historic Brandenburg Gate.

For a brief time, it was a reminder of what life was like before the Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9, 1989.

Traffic problems were the least of anyone's concerns in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). What people really wanted was freedom to speak their minds, travel widely and vote as they wished. They wanted to be free from worrying that cracking a joke about the government could land them in hot water.

And the Berlin Wall was the tangible representation of their lack of freedom, a concrete barrier that separated East Berlin from West Berlin and represented the "Iron Curtain" that kept the communist Eastern Bloc from the West.

Last Monday, thousands of people braved cool temperatures and rain to watch the 1.5-kilometre line of dominoes fall, a symbolic nod to the chain of events throughout East Germany and parts of Europe leading to the fateful night when the Wall fell.

I arrived with a friend at around 5 p.m. and staked out a place just south of the Brandenburg Gate, in clear sight of one of the many Jumbotrons set up so people could see what was going on. Other friends soon joined us. By 7, it was next to impossible to move around and hard to see anything above the sea of umbrellas. The saving grace was the nearby drink stand, which sold Glüwein -- warm red wine -- for 2.50 euros.

Although many high-profile world leaders were on hand -- including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy -- the loudest cheers were reserved for former Polish president Lech Walesa and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Earlier that day, German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- herself a child of East Germany -- singled out both men for their role in helping to bring down the wall. Walesa, who founded Poland's Solidarity party, was the victor in the first democratic elections held in an Eastern bloc country. Gorbachev, as Soviet leader, set out to reform the Communist bloc and ended up essentially causing its demise.

American rocker Jon Bon Jovi, German DJ Paul van Dyk and opera singer Placido Domingo each sang for the crowd. It's unclear how Bon Jovi got such a high-profile gig, but following his song, archival footage flashed across the screens showing the singer spray-painting his name on the Berlin Wall. He later told the crowd he still has a piece of the wall at home.

Judging from the diversity of the crowd, it seems this anniversary means almost as much to the outside world as it does to Berliners, who have had years to adjust to life without the Wall.

Reporters from around the globe converged on the city. Around me on the streets, I heard people speaking English, French, Polish, Italian and Japanese, among other languages.

It should be said, though, that not all Germans celebrated that night. The fall of the Wall meant certain hardships for people from the former East. Many lost their jobs after reunification and felt more like their country was taken over by the federal republic and less like it was an equal partner in the marriage of two states.

There were prejudices on both sides and a prevailing sense that a physical wall was simply replaced by a mental one. This sentiment might explain why some polls here have found a minority of people wish things could go back to the way they were, minus the repression.

After the final domino fell, the sky over the Brandenburg Gate was lit up with a dramatic show of fireworks. It was about that time 20 years before that people would have been starting to gather at border crossings. Outnumbered and lacking any clear direction from Communist party leaders, the East German border guards let people pass freely without a single shot being fired. Most of the 155-km Berlin Wall was torn down not long after, but it remains a key part of the city's DNA.

There are several museums and memorials dedicated to its memory, a double line of cobblestones retracing where it stood and several remaining sections that you can touch for yourself. My Lonely Planet guide quipped that it's ironic the city's most popular tourist attraction no longer exists.

The East Side Gallery, at more than a kilometre in length, is the name given to the largest, best-kept segment of the Wall. Staring up at it on my first night in Berlin, I found it far more sombre and imposing than I expected, even though more than 100 artists from 21 countries have painted over its drab, grey surface with murals expressing hope for the future.

One famous panel by Russian painter Dmitry Vrubel shows Erich Honecker, East Germany's chairman of the council of the state from 1976 to 1989, locked in a passionate kiss with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Another panel by Montreal-born artist Pierre-Paul Maillé borrows his native province's licence-plate mantra, "Je me souviens."

But the one I found most moving features a tree with sharp, leafless limbs pointing in many directions. Beside it, in German, are the words: "War will das die welt so bleibt wie sie ist der will nicht dass sie bleibt." In English: "He who wants the world to remain as it is doesn't want it to remain at all."

Pieces of the Wall, including one chunk I saw priced at 699 euros (almost $1,100 Cdn), are still available in most souvenir shops.

Kitschy? Perhaps. But nothing like what I found at the GDR Museum.

The hands-on museum bills itself as the only place to focus on the everyday life of people living in the GDR. In other words, if you enjoyed the quirky German film Goodbye Lenin!, then this is the place for you.

It's not terribly large -- in fact, the entire museum could probably fit comfortably into the gift shop at the Royal B.C. Museum. But it's definitely interesting.

Visitors here can learn about the Potty Bench, in which preschool-aged kids went No. 1 and 2 together at the same time on a long wooden bench they couldn't leave until everyone was finished. They can get behind the wheel of a Trabant, the famous line of cars produced in East Germany and still spotted on the streets here and there, or root through the cupboards and drawers of an authentic East German kitchen.

Those sections are gimmicky, but off in a corner sits a display about the dark side of the GDR. It offers a behind-the-scenes look at the Stasi, the East German secret police, and its surveillance techniques, including a series of creepy black-and-white photos taken by a camera hidden in a briefcase as people filed into a concert.

Visitors can also put on headphones and listen to authentic conversations bugged by Stasi spies. (Berlin also has a Stasi museum and prison that are open for tours.)

Perhaps most notable -- and comical -- is the museum's final display: An entire wall of photos and video from the nudist beaches of East Germany. The popularity of nudism, I learned, had less to do with sexual freedom and was "more of a resistance to the eternal conformity of the GDR, and nudity was a sign of true classlessness. In the end, those wearing swimsuits became the odd ones out."

On my last morning in Berlin, I walked west along Bernauer Strasse. Here perhaps more than anywhere else in the city is the absurdity of the division brought to life. Before the Wall was erected in August 1961, this was a normal residential street. Tenement houses lined both sides of the street.

But afterwards, residents on the East side were forced out of their apartments. Buildings were walled up and later torn down, creating a broad swath of land known as the death strip. Eight people died on this street trying to get over the wall.

Today, the bustling street is home to the Berlin Wall memorial. Two large slabs of steel bookend a section of the border strip, sealing it off in the condition it was found in the day the borders opened. An interpretive centre and chapel are located nearby and work is currently underway on an open-air exhibition along the former border grounds.

That exhibition will open in time to mark another important event: The 50th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall in 2011.

mpearson@tc.canwest.com