Having grown up in Mexico during a near economic collapse we had unlimited food, candy, colorful stores with plentiful fruits vegetables etc we never came close to being this dull.
It was a culture shock for the people! Money different, vacations different, housing, cars, law, rules, shopping, clothing, roads, how to write letters, jobs, everything different! 80% of all people lost there jobs within three Years. Even music or the school system changed. People had a culture shock.
You can see in this video that Transition was already in progress then, before the wall fell the shops didn't have a lot of color and advertisement at the front and bars wouldn't have fancy interiors ( the bar in this video was already outfitted in West German coffee bar style). The scene of the street starting at 4:12 looks not much different with a shopping high street in a West German small town by that time. I have been a couple of times in communist Hungary (1972 and 1980), and I remember that everything in bars and restaurants had very basic interiors or a 1950's modernism look, shops had just a writing on the front denoting if it was a bakery or a general store etc. , there were few stores that had self service. You see in this video some houses having freshly painted walls, while other streets still had that grimm colorless look of the DDR. As the wall came down there was access to a wealth of building materials, and first thing people did was renewing roofs, paint everything and turn many years of overdue maintenance back. Nice aspect in this video is the streets still filled with Trabants, Wartburgs, Dacia's and Lada's, in just a couple of years most of these were swapped for a VW, Opel or BMW, because people always had dreamt of the cars from West Germany, when I went to the East in 1998 you had to search for a Trabant on the street.
Exactly correct. Amazing what advancements and improvements the East Germans made in the months following the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. To be sure, these are the urban areas, where modernization and remodeling would have hit first
I was there in April of 1990 and the East was in the early stages of transition. It was very strange to basically go from one world to another. They are very proud people those East Germans. I went on to Poland and they were scared shitless thinking the Germans were going to go there and buy up everything.
The Poles were not wrong. No, in the EU, which the fourth REich actually, Poland produces nothing, we are only cheap labour fo German factories. Not that I miss communism, never. The point is the transition in the post soviet block benefitted Germans the most. Just like the Second World War. A paradox, huh?
@Robo We Germans love American music. We always have. So STFU. We can listen to whatever we want to. Also western music was very popular with younger GDR citizens.
I visited Berlin for 3 days in December of 1990. Our train still had to stop at the former border of west/east Germany. The sniper tower was empty. The wall was gone in Berlin, and I had full access to all locations, including that giant radio/tv tower in the former east Berlin. I hope to return someday.
@Robo We're talking about pre 1990 GDR, not present day united Germany. Importing western cars was a relative luxury, but perfectly legal. A lot of people have the misconception that it was illegal to import into the eastern bloc.
I made a couple of trips to the GDR in 1988 and 1989 , jusr before. The pressure you speak of WAS there, the people mostly wanted democracy and most of all freedom to travel. It was no paradise but many of the things we in the west stress our whole lifes sorting out - health and education and crime - were not a problem.
I always suspected East Germany prior it's fall to look like how North Korea looks today compared to the South Korea. This video to me appears that East German towns where looking like any other town in Europe with shops, pubs, and housing flats. Only difference was the soviet style cars and trams.
To be fair, this was filmed in the cities that have been used by the goverment to show how well the life is. If you go to different cities and villages you see houses that are about to collapse at any moment and you see houses without windows. But food was always enough.
Ricardo Kakáresma Still it looks almost first world for Latin American standards. Things here look the same as they used to 50 or 60 years ago. Impoverished neighbourhoods, decaying infraestructure, homeless people, etc. Despite most of us haven't experienced communism.
It was (almost) like North Korea is compared to South Korea today. This video was taken just after the fall of the Berlin Wall and things had been steadily opening up by this point. Few people could afford cars and those who could had to wait years for a dreadful Trabant. Those who were really lucky could hope for a Wartburg, Lada or GAZ. A lot of the urban planning was typically Soviet, with masses of concrete flats known there as "plattenbau". And the quality of the roads was dreadful.
@Michael Moretti You're right! I'm from UK and spent years touring throughout Europe yet EVERY time at UK border control my vehicle is searched and i'm asked where i'm going or been to.
@@m.w.6526 He's not. The elections were ridiculous, you could only vote for one party. Call that an election? And a basic human right is freedom of speech or freedom in general but east Germans were literally imprisoned in their country and freedom of speech wasn't exactly a thing.
Wonderfully clean society, pristine buildings and visitor attractions, healthy wholesome food at restaurants, hardly any drugs/ prostitution/ homelessness/ AIDS/ motorway deaths. Happy and well educated school kids, good youth teenage society/ entertainment, and an academic study showing that East German married couples had much better sex than those in the West! The East has it! Whats not to like?
How about constant opression by state and STASI? How about being unable to achive anything in life without crawling up the asses of the comunist party? How about not being able to eat banans, oranges, coffe, chocolate etc? Not having phones or good roads unless living in big city? And thats just the DDR the least unsuccesfull of the communist States, the Soviets and Chinese killed half thier population!
These pictures are taken pretty long after the wall dropped. There are many places already been renewed or started renewing. East Berlin and actually the whole GDR looked much worse in Nov '89 ....
James Walker racists usually are, can’t help it germany was broken by people like him they craw out of the woodwork scream and shout ruin everything then craw back under the rock they came from ready to do it again and again sad really
SMGJohn So what if they are Muslims? The only thing you can complain about is the easy nationalisation laws for people who don’t come from the land as a socialist. I suppose, you would be lax on immigration.
I went to Berlin a few years ago and stayed in the former eastern part where I found striking remarks from the DDR-era.Trabants are still widely used aswell as huge russian military heating pipes along roads, I even found a russian grocerystore next to Landsberger Allé.
"The socialist "regime" was not a police state nightmare, but simply a different kind of state with different priorities." One of the American commentators wrote this here, and it is perfectly true. East Germany strictly differenciated between what was needed for everyday life and what belongs to the so called luxurious goods. What is expensive today was much cheaper then: rents for flats, textiles, food, heating, education without payment, healthcare without payment, dentists without payment, no drugs, no unemployed, no prostitutes, no homeless. Everything was provided for, and everyone could afford it. Cheap music schools, cheap tickets for opera houses and concert halls, regional libraries etc. People lived in absolute safety without any fear of their future or the future of their families and children. The back side of the coin was a lower variety of consumer goods, less coloured paper and adverts on the walls, very expensive cars, TV sets and radios because people needed them maybe every eight or ten years only. And travelling to the western countries was fairly restricted. The life in the sphere of employment and family was much more free than today. Without any bureaucracy and oppression. East Germany was an ideological dictatorship, today the western countries are fiscal and economic dictatorships. East Germany was more pleasant to the employees, todays societies are more effective and profitable to the employers who regard the rest of their people as cheap labour slaves. East Germany had a concept of human life and a system of values that was totally different from what people in the west are used to today. Unfortunately today's propaganda only compares the bad attributes of the East with the glamourous attributes of the West. But that is not enough.
I am there at the moment and even after the fall of the wall east Berlin is still looking very dull, soviet architecture, empty streets, and no much fashion sense, they still don’t take credit card so if you are planning on coming get some cash!
I am not sure which part of the East you are talking about. They have as much fashion sense as they want, nice buildings and parks, nice people. As for cash a lot of places in Germany prefer cash, and I found that more of an issue in Bavaria than East Berlin.
Free education, free health services, 0% poverty, 0% unemployment, upward social mobility, no fear of being fired from your job, no fear of being kicked out of your apartment and guaranteed retirement and annual vacations.
It was one of the best countries in the east block. Perhaps Yugoslavia was better then east Germany but it still does not mean people would tolerate it for much longer.
The West Germans weren't all thrilled about reunification because it was really expensive to modernize the East. And East German university students, even though they'd been studying for a few years couldn't get their degrees recognized in the west and had to go back to school, amongst some of the western insults to easterners or "Ossies."
By the way east Germany was communist anyway. Nobody has done a playlist for any of the songs. They were also bankrupt by the end of the 1980s and had started on a social market economy before they decided to join together again.
LAOZ Gaming & Commentary You do not seem to be educated on communism you made a common misstake so let get it straight. First of all communism have already been achieaved in human history when we had hunter-gatherer societies in that time we co operated and filled diffrent functions without any leaders to exploit us. Just because a society are class less doesnt mean there will not be cordination and planning and co operation. Well its a bit difficult to suceed when the capitalist countries sabotage, put embargos, use economic and pshycological warfare and war against the communist countries why did you think the communist countries had food shortages and lines! Because the capitalist isolated the communists and used economic warfare to destroy their economies. And the reason for this is simple if communists take power the rich lose their money and ability to exploit people. Why should a filthy rich minority controll the working people who build a country, Wouldnt it be better if we all shared and co operated to solve problems? We have enough wealth to feed the world and give every human on this plannet a life of high standard. And second point you said the Soviets killed thousands they have a civil war against the whites (royalists supported by the capitalists) so of course in war people die, If you reffer to Stalin thats a lie first they said 40 million then they said 20 million now they say 1 million and there is not a single shreed of evidence to back it up. But of course the capitalists are going to say lies to discredit communism.
Nobody need to tell lies to "discredit communism" as the latter discredits itself a minute after it starts functioning. You write: "Why should a filthy rich minority controll the working people who build a country". You do realize that you've just summed up the essence of communist countries? This is how it worked and works. Being a Pole, I know a few things.
Thank you for recording and sharing this, good sir. I wish could go back in time and tour all those 'lost worlds" but these videos are the best we've got.
North Korea is not a communist country. It is an absolute, hereditary monarchy with elements of industrial feudalism. A much better destination to relive the experience of communism (or the 'real socialism' to be more precise) is Cuba.
I went to North Korea in 2015 for the 75th anniversary of the WPK, it's like how I imagine visiting the Eastern Bloc was on steroids. It is absolutely a once in a lifetime experience.
+Janusz Krysztofiak Socialism is a science and as such it can only be Socialist if the economy is centrally planned, all private property and private accumulation of wealth is abolished, the DPRK fits all of these. Feudalistic economies still have huge elements of private property you twat and private accumulation of wealth, so remove both were basically is the core of both feudalism and Capitalism you end up with neither. Cuba is in fact a Capitalist country today because of the simple fact its economy is no longer planned, there is private ownership of property and private accumulation of wealth, Cuba ceased to be Socialist in early 2000s, DPRK is the oldest standing Socialist country in history.
My last trip to East Germany was in 1967 spending five weeks visiting my relatives near Ludwigslust, Mecklenburg. As a fourteen year old, it was a trip of fascination mixed with wonder. My crossing into East Germany at Schwanheide was particularity interesting. I hope to return in 2022 to where I was born and lived as a child before emigrating to Canada.
They value function over aesthetics. They'd rather have people live in shitty building that aren't so expensive to make than on the streets. Brutalist architecture can look cool sometimes though.
For me it was, and still is amazing, beyond my ability to fully fathom, to see the wall, it coming down and the transformation throughout the 2000s. Now the double row of stones in the ground showing where the wall was. All around it, the modern structures and goings on as if there never was a wall etc. I stand at the stones, look around and just simply cannot get passed astonishment, bewilderment and awe.
This is absolutely not the case. Check out at least the buildings made or at least projected under Lenin, and you will understand how much communism approves of unusual and futuristic ideas.
sure m8, ever been to the DDR? my parents lived there, and they are anti-communist , but according to them IT WASNT BAD AT ALL. maybe if your country didnt put an economical block on the DDR and the USSR they could have lived more free
Please, never delete this. Your video is my favorite on RU-vid. I remember watching this video 10 years ago for the first time. It's what got me interested in eastern bloc countries. Thanks
In sep1984 I had bus ride from west berlin to Nuremberg and it starts at evening and we got there early morning , lots of check points in the middle of nowhere with dim lights which made you scared . Looks like the whole area was abandoned
Awesome video! Brings back memories! I was in Schwerin last year and I loved it! Stayed in the East for a month!! I think that it's nicer and quieter than the west. Very nice people!
I dont' see that everything was so bad in the DDR as they want us to believe. If you are makin fun at their cars you should know that not everyone in the West can afford to have a Mercedes.
WOW, did the communist do ANYTHING to East Germany from 1945 to 1989. NO what a joke communism is a TOTAL JOKE. Shitty little deathtrap car, a skateboard is safer.I can't believe how BAD the east was.
@@nahbenhaben7614 it wasn't, my family lives in mecklenburg-pomerania, and they always said that hungary and the czech republic where muuuch nicer, and richer, back in the socialist days
Lauri Toerni Interestingly last week I was speaking to a Romanian lady who was very disappointed with how Romania is now and yearned for the days of Communism. There were less freedoms in many ways but she had job security, healthcare and education. It wasn’t perfect but capitalism hasn’t given them the dreams they were promised
@DeLorean4 That's how you could tell a DDR leader or Party official; they had the nice things. For those who say communist was great ask this: would Honecker drive a Trabant? Hell no....
The pressure I speak of WAS always there from the moment of the DDR's creation. However the point you've made is exactly the point that I was making, no system is perfect so we don't have to act like socialism is something evil, look at the state we're in now because of (American) capitalist greed. The only difference now is there's no wall to jump over with an (imaginary) paradise waiting on the other side.
@Robo Hahahaha not really. As a German i can only laugh at your comment. Because of Communism the East today is much poorer then the rest of Germany. I visit the East all the time and its by far not better.
