From East to West Germany - leaving a country that doesn't exist anymore

I was born and raised in the German Democratic Republic and lived there for almost 16 years, behind the Iron Curtain. On 1 June 1989 I left the country, with my family and a couple of bags of personal belongings. On 2 June 1989 we arrived in Darmstadt where my grandparents were living at that time. This was just a few weeks before the Iron Curtain got its first holes and many people left the count…