06 October 2004

First Impressions of Eastern Germany

We just returned from our trip to eastern Germany. After two and a half years in Germany, this was my first time in eastern Germany and I have to say that it was a very enlightening experience.

The first thing that A. pointed out to me when we crossed the border from Bavaria into Sachsen was an old communist watch tower and a few other left-over relics from the DDR. He then informed me that during those times no villages or houses were allowed to be 5-10 kilometers from the border because there were barbed wire fences and mine fields.

Since coming to Germany I have heard tales about the depression and abandonment of East Germany: I had read that once the Iron Curtain fell, many people fled to the West seeking a better life and those left behind were mostly the poor and uneducated. I had also heard that there are buildings that are still standing where you can see the bullet holes left from the War. My mother-in-law once commented that every time she went to the east she felt that it was just rotting away.

However, it wasn't until we arrived in Chemnitz (which until 1990 was called Karl-Marx-Stadt) that these accounts made a significant impression on me. One of the first things I noticed was that beautiful architecture stood side by side with functional communist design and both were in similar states of decay. Windows weren't just boarded up, they were bricked up and the ones that weren't were covered with graffiti. The buildings that weren't falling apart were usually dirty and the lower floors that might house businesses were either for rent or looked like they were soon to go out of business. Rows and rows of apartment buildings were utterly dark and the streets were silent. Compared to a bustling metropolis like Munich, Chemnitz looked and felt deserted.

Population-wise, Chemnitz is much smaller than Munich, so I expected it to be quieter. However, it wasn't just a bit quieter: in comparison to a western German city of equal size, Chemnitz was DEAD! At 7:00 p.m. on a Friday evening the Fußgangerzone (pedestrian area) was almost completely empty. The streets had very little traffic and we saw very few people out and about. For many of my American readers this may not seem too strange, but for those of you living in Germany you know what I mean.

All of these observations came to me in the first six hours I was in eastern Germany. We were planning on being there for five days, so I wondered how other areas of eastern Germany would compare to my first impressions. Those thoughts later...

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