Great to be back in Berlin, the city of my earlier youth. Then (1985-88) it was West Berlin and if you walked just 500 metres from here, you’d be shot. If we think how much the world has changed in the last 5 years, how much has it changed in the last 35?

Friedrichstrasse Station. In 1985, it had two sets of platforms, separated by concrete, barbed wire & armed guards. The Eastern platforms had people from East & West. The West was West only. Quite a few Easterners risked their lives here - some were murdered by their own Govt.

Quite an eye-opener (to put it mildly), aged 19 in 1985. I worked in the roughest part of Berlin (Kreuzberg) & lived in the second roughest (Moabit). This is the pizzeria I had my nose broken, in a fight within days of moving in! For me, that time was life- (and nose-) changing!

My strong advice is this: do take the opportunity to live abroad when you can, learn the language, experience another culture (you can’t understand your own if you haven’t experienced another). But don’t get into fights.

Now going through Königs Wusterhausen Station. Here I met dissident Heiko Sänger in March 1987. “Dissident” would seem too grand to him. He was just an ordinary guy, a cook in a discotheque, who had the temerity to apply to leave East Germany. He was sent to prison instead.

And back in East German times, there was definitely no “Brand Tropical Islands” station...