It's impossible to overstate the importance of the events of 1989 on my life. I was 16 years old when the "dominoes" fell, and I was captivated. As an extemper (any speech and debate nerds out there besides my brother?), I spent pretty much every weekend for six months giving speeches about the Poles, the Czechs, the Romanians, the Hungarians, the East Germans...and I was in heaven. I can't tell you much else about what happened at the end of 1989, but I can tell you all about that (and I can pronounce all the names, from Jaruzelski to Ceausecsu). It's not at all a coincidence that 1989-90 was the only year in which I qualified for speech nationals.
When I started that school year, I wanted to be a psychiatrist when I grew up. By the end of the year, I was planning to study Russian and go live and work in the post-communist region, and that's pretty much what I did. I first visited Berlin and Prague in 1991 (and figured out that I'd better study German as well) and went back to the region, broadly defined, as often as I could until moving to Prague in 2000. Eleven years after the Velvet Revolution, Prague was certainly not the same place it was in 1989. Now, 20 years on (and five years after my departure), I'm sure it's even further removed.
I know that things have not been smooth for the countries of the region, but it has been amazing to watch--not just then but now. For anyone interested in the events of 1989 (and what has happened since then) I hope you will visit my old workplace, Transitions Online. No Western outlet is going to be able to match their offerings during this commemorative period. I am still as proud of the work I did there as I am of anything else I've done in my life, and I'm grateful that they remain on the front lines.
Happy Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall!
Edited to add: For another perspective from a post-communist crazy like me (go figure, we met in graduate school for Russian and East European Studies) on 1989, go read this post from a friend, who showed up in the comments yesterday. She and her Russian-born husband are now living in Thailand with their two kids, en route to an eventual stay in China.