Tanya Heaslip

I'd been so disillusioned.

And suddenly it was like, yes, I know what I want to do now.

I want to get over that wall and see what's on the other side.

I've tried never to forget that lesson as well, that something you think is immobile and will stand and stand and go on forever can just go like that overnight.

Overnight.

And in fact, it's been building up all along, but you just haven't quite seen it.

Exactly.

Thousands of protests behind the Iron Curtain.

So many people killed in jail.

But of course, we didn't hear that or know that.

So it seemed very fairytale-like to someone like me.

I visited a secret police prison in Potsdam, just outside of East Berlin at the time.

It was a hell of a time.

To see the joyous atmosphere of that cloud lifting was just great.

Yes, of people's freedom.

It really showed to me that the most important thing in life for human beings is that freedom, that choice, the capacity to live and choose your own life.

Boarding school, prisons, anywhere like that that crushes your spirit, totalitarian regimes, you see the joy in people when they feel free again and you think that's got to be the right way to live.

So after having that electrifying experience of the fall of the Berlin Wall, you went back to Central Europe a few years later, but this time to Czechoslovakia, which is now the Czech Republic.

What was your plan at that time, Tanja?

To be honest, there wasn't much of a plan.