Where were YOU 30 years ago?

1989. Do you have memories of that time? 

The year when the Berlin Wall comes down and the Eastern European Socialist/Communist countries change their leaders and regimes. The Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu is executed, Havel becomes president of Czechoslovakia, there are Pro-democracy rallies in Tiananmen Square. 

If you were born 30 years ago perhaps you remember the 'Die Hard' movie or bands like Fine Young Cannibals, Public Enemy, or Milli Vanilli. 

But if you were one of today's most powerful world leaders, where were you in those days of '89 when a new world was being born?

Let's start with the first 2 STORIES, both from Germany, both about 2 promising young future leaders:

>> 1st Personal (Inspirational) Story: 

You're a young chemist in East Germany, studying the vibrational properties of surface hydroxyls using non-empirical model calculations including anharmonicities. As you walk past the Berlin Wall every day, you probably dream of the world beyond it. After it falls in 1989, you will enter the politics of a reunified Germany and rise to become...

Chancellor Angela Merkel.

>> 2nd Personal (Inspirational) Story

You're a bored young KGB agent in Dresden, dreaming of being a dashing spy, but stuck in something of a Cold War backwater, playing ping-pong and getting fat. As you tell it, you are infuriated at Moscow's humiliating paralysis as the Eastern Bloc crumbles. Eleven years later you will become the man dreaming to Make Russia Great Again...

Russian President Vladimir Putin.

... to be continued...