"The wall was there and we lived with it," said Anja Werth, an Auburn professor in German. "We didn't know anything else."
Werth grew up in East Germany, also known as the German Democratic Republic.
"I knew there was another Germany somewhere, but you never really thought about it," Werth said.
Werth said she remembers enjoying school, playing games after school and having a happy childhood.
Her family lived in a private apartment in a hotel, because her father worked for the government in the hotel business.
People were not starving, but there were fewer brands of food. Because of this, Werth said she associates the sight or smell of oranges with Christmas, because that was when they were available.
"There was food on the table, everybody had a roof over their head and everybody had a job," Werth said. "East Germany had a 100 percent employment rate."
After the wall fell, children from West Germany bombarded her with questions wanting to know about life in East Germany.
"I got questions like, did you have chocolate and TV and telephones and bathrooms inside with running water," Werth said. "We did not feel like we were missing anything."
On the contrary, Anna-Katrin Gramberg, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, grew up in West Germany.
"Life in West Germany was very much like the United States of America," Gramberg said.
Gramberg moved to the U.S. in 1986, three years before the wall came down.
Pat Deery, a U.S. Army officer stationed in Berlin, remembers a yellow hue over East Germany during winters from the burning of high-sulfer peat.
"We did not feel that our life was so dreary and gray and dark," Deery said.
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