& HER GIRL 29 YEARS AFTER FALL OF WALL

MY daughter Rosie hacks furiously at the huge wedge of rock…and for a moment I’m transported back to a raucous night.

That was when I, too, armed with a knife and a shoe, began chiselling away in a similar fashion.

This isn’t any old slab – it’s one of Germany’s few remaining pieces of the Berlin Wall, torn down in 1989 as freedom engulfed the Eastern Bloc states.

Most was shipped off abroad but the plush Westin Grand Hotel in Berlin’s city centre cleverly snapped up its own chunk, allowing some lucky guests to take home their very own piece of history.

Rosie is only 11 but she is now the proud owner of a fragment of Europe’s most notorious and bloody wall.

For me, Berlin has special memories. I’d visited the city several times as a young adult and cast a tourist’s eye over the stark contrast in life either side of its great divide.

The 100-mile long Wall had been erected by the iron-fisted government of Berlin’s Soviet-controlled East zone to halt the exodus of people leaving for the Allied-occupied West zone. But on November 9, 1989, political changes led to oncestrict Communist borders being opened and Berlin residents began symbolically chipping away at the barricade that had split families and friends for 28 years.

I dashed over to join them, using a kitchen knife and a shoe to hammer out my COSTA DEL SOL: own little slice amid mass cheering, much singing and rather more mulled wine than I care to admit to.

Wall aside, the Westin Grand is in a fantastic position, just a few minutes’ walk from Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. Built as a sign of peace, it became one of Cold War Germany’s most poignant symbols, cut off in no man’s land between East and West border strips.

A little further is the imposing Reichstag building – Germany’s answer to the Houses of Parliament.

Over the years it’s been ravaged by war and fire but huge renovation – including a stunning glass dome designed by

Brit Sir Norman Foster

– has restored its glory.

You can visit the dome and a vast roof terrace for free with advance registration. Even from the outside, the building is a beauty and its famous inscription “Dem Deutschen Volke” (To the German People) is a stirring reminder of Germany’s past strife. The DDR Museum is worth a trip for a snapshot of life in Cold War East Germany. Kids will love sitting in the old Trabant – a primitive two-stroke engine car with a 16-year waiting list – poking around an old apartment and eavesdropping on residents. Rosie is animal mad so we couldn’t miss Berlin Zoo, Germany’s oldest. It’s probably most famous for hand-raising baby polar bear Knut. Sadly Knut is no longer with us but you can still see other polar bears, gorillas and penguins. Our favourite bit was the hippo pool with see-through sides so you can watch the giants underwater.

Pay a bit extra for the aquarium next door, where you can walk over a crocodile pit, watch sharks and cringe at hundreds of jellyfish.

For beasts of a different kind we headed to the Natural History Museum, home to Tristan, Europe’s only T-Rex skeleton. At 12 metres long, four metres high and 66million years old, he’s an awe-inspiring fossil, but don’t miss the other dinosaur bones.

For a great view over the city we avoided the long queues at the TV Tower and headed to the Panoramapunkt. It’s 100m high and boasts Europe’s fastest lift (24 floors in 20 seconds). Later we watched the world go by over lunch on the Westin Grand’s terrace alongside its Berlin Wall slab.

For a five-star hotel it’s very family friendly and offers an imaginative kids’ menu.

Rosie played it safe with the Westin’s classic burger while I had a delicious Green Max – toasted dark bread with tartar of aubergine, avocado and fried eggs. I’d heard it said Rosie was a chip off the old block and as I watched her chiselling away, I knew she’d finally proved it.