A papal visit and German reunification
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We did something that no one else had ever done.
There was such an excitement and energy about this moment.
It opened the door for everything that rapidly followed.
Witness history. History as told by the people who were there. I was walking in space, the first man ever to do so. I felt almost insignificant, like a tiny ant compared to the immensity of the universe.
Witness history from the BBC World Service.
Listen now. Search for Witness History wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Hello and welcome to the History Hour, this week's stories and characters, as featured on Witness History here on the BBC World Service, with me, Max Pearson. Coming up, the extraordinary events surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. History was suddenly accelerating.
People were understanding this is the end of this regime and let's use it. Freedom is the word, Freiheit.
Also, the courage of the Maasai in Kenya when confronted by dying cattle in a drought. It's an ecological, social and economic collapse for the Maasai. It basically means death. Plus a long trek along the Great Wall of China. And I began to think, I bet no one has ever walked along the whole thing before. If I could do that and document what I see, that would be a really meaningful contribution to our nation's history. And how Anthony Bourdain reinvented the art of writing about food. All his writing reflected more the The noise, the pressure, the craziness, the sweat, the burn, everything that is going on in the kitchen. But first, popes have been making and shaping history for millennia. But in the last century, it was Pope John Paul II who set a very high standard in terms of his visibility and connection with the world's more than one billion Roman Catholics.
Jendale takes us back to the 22nd of November 1986, when Pope John Paul visited New Zealand as part of a whirlwind six-nation tour.
It's Pope John Paul's longest ever foreign tour, and it also promises to be his most gruelling. Over a two-week period, he's scheduled to travel more than 30,000 miles, visiting Bangladesh, Singapore, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and the Seychelles. The vast expanse of Auckland City's largest and oldest recreational area, the Domain, is today a sea of faces looking towards a papal throne set on the special purple carpeted stage. Thousands of people are here in celebration of the visit of Pope John Paul II.
One of those carefully preparing for this historic event, as reported by Radio New Zealand, is Michael Jarka. Michael is half Polish and is part of a dance group who want to give the Polish-born pontiff a little taste of home. They work hard in the months before to get everything perfect. They made wooden crosses which had a message of welcome to the Pope. And we all helped out, sort of like on a production line, making those things and that, sewing Polish flags and getting Vatican flags and things and making the costumes and just going to practices every Sunday afternoon. I remember going to those. Great fun. The women's costumes, basically they were a white blouse with thin red ribbons and they wore a black bodice that was very heavily embroidered with sequins and...
diamantes and things like that my costume was what they called a Krakowian costume the hat was like a university cap it was red black band and it had peacock feathers which stood out and a blue jacket was a sleeveless jacket that sort of went down to about your knee length patterns of like roosters and various other traditional Polish figures and that then the trousers were striped and then you wore either socks or boots below that it was very very colourful and you just felt so proud being in that costume The day arrives that Michael has been waiting for, and despite it turning wet and windy later in the tour at Wellington and Christchurch, the sun shines down in Auckland.
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