Former East Germany I should say. Back in the mid 90’s I remember reading about problems of culture shock and the difficulties many East Germans were facing integrating into a capitalist society.
It’s been nearly 20 years since reunification now. Have the cultural differences begun to fade a bit?
As an aside: I would LOVE to have an “Ask the former East German” thread.
In 2007 I spent some time in West and East Germany. One startling difference is the cars. In West Germany, they drive new BMWs. In East, they drive second-hand Volkswagens. The wealth difference is still very stark. Taking a train from West to East showed there is still a long way to go before all differences are erased.
I have a friend in Dublin who is from the former East Germany. He says it was/is like “we’re always in a dream, we didn’t know how it goes cos we were doped…”
I haven’t been to East Germany, but I’ve spent a lot of time in several other former Eastern Bloc nations, and the transition has been very, very difficult. It’s easy for me to understand why Russians are happy with their neo-KGB government. East Germany is unique, though, because it joined up with a rich nation, rather than going it alone.
I’d love to hear more, if anyone else has experience there.
For a nice quick tour of Eastern Bloc countries check out the documentary Michael Palin’s New Europe. He visits all of those countries - honestly, some I’ve never heard of! - and talks to a lot of people, young and old.
Part of my family comes from East Germany. In fact, my mother was born there, and fled along with her parents as refugees when she was seven years old. We’ve been back to visit the town where she was born at least five times since reunification. I would say there’s definitely still a cultural gulf there.
The town does have electricity, running water, and phone service. I’m under the impression that everywhere in ex-East Germany does. There’s still a sizable shortfall of technology, however. For one thing, many of the roads are still cobblestone, rather than paved. Wooden buildings are much more common in the east then the west.
In the larger cities they do have paved roads and all the rest, but everything is generally more shabby and dilapidated than in the west. Some western chains have set up shop. McDonald’s seems to be particularly common all over the former Soviet bloc. However, I’ve seen nothing like a modern shopping mall in any East German city.
Was there anywhere in actual East Germany that didn’t?
That’s not unusual in Western Europe, even in rich places that are not trying to cater for tourists or deliberately look dated. I live on such a street in the UK.
On electricity, running water and phone service - Old East Germany did too. In the 1990s they got large subsidies to upgrade their infrastructure and tax breaks for construction, which is why there is now an oversupply lot of commercial real estate, and a lot of roads for a shrinking population. (Leaving streets cobblestoned would mostly be intentional)
The phone system got upgraded a lot in the early 1990s which in some regions led to problems when broadband internet got big a few years ago - as the phone systems had been upgraded fo optical fibre people could not get DSL (the latter relying to twisted wire technology which had been leapfrogged).
Demographics seems to be the gravest problem for East German small town and villages: The most employable people have tended to moved to the western German states, where the better jobs are. Pensioners have stayed (their pension is worth a bit more, with lower prices). Young women seem to be more willing to leave to the west to better themselves than young men do. Armed force intake tests have shown that the average intelligence of conscript-age men in East Germany has decreased measurably.
So, areas in East Germany that weren’t too bad under Communism now tend to be populated by retired people plus young, unemployed, stupid young men who aren’t getting any.
Always a recipe for an interesting few years ahead, regardless of where on Earth it is.
ETA: one sentence, one typo. Damn.
You haven’t looked far :-
http://www.ltm-leipzig.de/cs/click.system?navid=1690&sid=hlhgtq3e8h2cM01LKAR5LirNhBdv4mYJ
http://www.germany-tourism.de/ENG/destination_germany/master_tlsight-id1069-fstadt_shopping.htm
The communists were really big on electricity, actually, so this is kind of damning with faint praise - I think the only places in all of Eastern Europe you’re not going to find electricity are Roma neighborhoods. Running water is a different story, though.
Well what is the former West Germany doing to help the eastern part
My daughter visited East Berlin in the spring to see if she was confident enough in her German to go there for college. She was, and is in the West now. She found that in East Berlin it was easy to find people to speak German to, since they didn’t know English, while in Munich everyone responded to her in English. I guess in the East they learned Russian in school.
At the very least it was paying a 7.5 percent unification tax for a number of years (still could be) to help bring Eastern infrastructure up to Western levels.
Bit like Wigan and Rochdale then
Honestly, it really depended on what part of former East Germany you were visiting. I know that unemployment rates (at least in the early 2000s) were much higher in East Germany, but in certain cities, I couldn’t see a huge disparity of wealth. For example, and maybe it’s just an anomalous experience, but Dresden looked pretty damn sharp and the people were better dressed than, say, the people in Hamburg. If they didn’t have much money, they sure dressed like they did. Prices didn’t seem much cheaper than anything in the western part of Germany. Really, Dresden was one classy looking city, at least in the general central area. Same with Leipzig and Erfurt. My impressions of Magdeburg and Chemnitz were a little less favorable, but still, at least superficially, they looked fine to me.
Of course, this is just a superficial view of the cities, but, at least to this observer, the disparities were not as stark between eastern and western Germany as I had expected them to be. My understanding from people who live there, though, is that it’s much rougher than a casual glance would lead one to believe.
Incidentally, Eastern Berlin is about a million times nicer than Western Berlin, which seems to consist of sex shops, brothels and other businesses of ill-repute. The difference between the two sides of the city is pretty startling.
You dirty southern dog.
Northern dog if you please:D
** I was expecting you to put in an appearance old chum