"OSTALGIE"

Denny Lee had this say about Berlin aesthetics in a 2009 travel report for the New York Times : "Clunky Trabants belching car exhaust along Karl-Marx-Allee. Red-and-yellow East German flags fluttering from storefronts. Retro-chic bars that resemble cold-war bomb shelters. The Berlin Wall may have fallen 20 years ago next month, but in certain pockets of this pulsating German capital, it seems to be going back up – at least for those too young to recall what life was like in the German Democratic Republic. From stylish hotels that resemble 1970s Soviet housing to boutiques that elevate kitschy East German goods to high design, Berlin is still divided – on whether the Iron Curtain was cool. There’s even a German word for it, “ostalgie,” a combination of the words “ost” (east) and “nostalgie” (nostalgia)."

And from Time Magazine in 2009: Or take a look at Leipzig's Museum Runde Ecke , another Stasi base that is now an authentically preserved museum filled with examples of how East German society was controlled. They are enough to cure any misplaced notion of the D.D.R. as a place where life was badly dressed but somehow simpler and more virtuous. "I sympathize with the idea of Ostalgie," says Irmtraut Hollitzer of the citizens' committee that established the Museum Runde Ecke. "But the Stasi museum is meant to help people remember the queues, the decay, the waiving of freedom to travel, the Wall. It gives an insight into what happens when democracy and freedom are missing."