Time travel has gone a long way since Michael J. Fox's Back to the Future movie became a hit in the 1990s. With smartphones and tablets now part of a traveler's necessities, these devices are not only for communicating with people left back home or taking selfies but also to give the user a glimpse of a historic landmark using a newly released app.

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The landmark is Germany's Berlin Wall, which used to divide East and West Germany. With the Augmented Realty app by German filmmaker Robin von Hardenberg, the device owner could view historical film footage, demolished sites that were reconstructed and accounts of how the wall divided Deutschland.

For instance, if the smartphone is pointed at Bernauer Street in Berlin, black-and-white video clip shows how Frieda Schulze, an East German resident, escaped from the first floor window of her house in 1961 right after the wall was erected.

Explaining the app, von Hardenberg told Euronews, "The problem with historic sites is that when you get there, you look around, then the first thing you do is look in your guide book, and in the end you don't get a true feel for the place. With this app, you can be on site and see past events unfold right before your eyes."

The app is available for gadgets running on iOS and Android. Users are guided by the app using a GPS-based tour of 11 major historical sites of the Berlin Wall on Bernauer Street. "Once guided to the appropriate locations by GPS, the application switches to optical tracking mode where it recognizes sites and then displays stories of events that happened over five decades," Techcrunch further explains.

Von Hardenberg, who selected the Berlin Wall because it is one of the frequently visited landmarks in Germany, said the youth would find the app amazing because it provides them improved historical lessons since it makes them feel "like you were there at that precise moment."

He added that the app not only gives the device owners to relive the historic moments but also an opportunity to develop new types of teaching formats that are at the same time a lot of fun.

Tagstime travel, App, Berlin Wall