I went to Amsterdam at the end of last week. I was only gone for two days, but when I returned to the German capital, I was shocked to see that a piece of the Berlin Wall, which I walk past regularly, had gone.
Overnight government workers had come along and yanked it out of its foundations, to make way for a new environment ministry which is being built on the site on Erna-Berger Strasse just off Potsdamer Platz.
You may think the less that remains of that monstrosity which divided a country for 28 years, the better. But it is getting ever harder to imagine what that division might have been like. This is of particular importance to young people and visitors to the city, and for Berlin itself, whose identity is inextricably linked to that of the wall.
Bits of the structure remain dotted around the city, but they are getting fewer and fewer each year. I was particularly fond of the 18-metre stretch near Potsdamer Platz as it was the section I stumbled across one cold October night in 1990 on my first visit to Berlin.
The environment ministry promises it will restore and then re-erect the missing piece, displaying it behind a glass window for all to see.
But the "cloak and daggers" action, as it was referred to by one particularly irate citizen who claims he bought that section from a former border guard, has reignited a perennial debate about preserving the remaining sections of the wall, which snaked for almost 27 miles through East and West Berlin between 1961 and 1989.
The longest section is on Mühlenstrasse, a 1.3km stretch on the river Spree known as the East Side Gallery which artists from 21 countries were invited to decorate in 1990. But that is visibly crumbling, and last year a 45-metre stretch was removed from the Gallery at the request of a mobile phone company because it blocked their view.
Around 212 metres have been listed on Bernauer Strasse - the only section still displaying all the grisly elements - such as the death strip, guard posts and barbed wire - that formerly made up the Cold War barrier.
There's also a sad and very crumbling piece running alongside the former Nazi headquarters of surveillance and persecution (containing the Gestapo and SS) just off Stresemannstrasse. It's one of the best examples of the many raw displays of history that are to be found in Berlin.
Building historian Johannes Cramer of the Free University has been openly critical of the lack of a comprehensive plan for the wall's preservation. "I find it scandalous the arbitrary way in which this historical monument, one of the last original pieces of wall that we still have, is dealt with," he said.
The Green party plans to bring up the issue at the next government cultural committee meeting. They are among those who fear that if a comprehensive preservation plan isn't decided upon soon, in another 20 years there will be nothing left to see.
Kate Connolly reports for the Guardian from Berlin
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