nutrivetz

Needless to say, the original wall was topped with barbed wire, watched over by soldiers in towers with guns and dogs, and its purpose was not art. Friedrichshain's Mondos Arts sells a "GDR box"; it contains authentic trinkets and a reprinted GDR newspaper. I remember the way grim guards used to inspect the underside of your car with mirrors on wheels. Children were encouraged to report on parents, teachers on students, friends on friends. Pictures of Karl Marx and former GDR leader Erich Honecker hang on the walls of Ostzone, a very funky bar that—like all cult hangouts—opens and closes without warning. Spy cameras, including some that were planted in watering cans, are exhibited here. It seemed a delicious nose-thumbing gesture to possess a forbidden piece of the system—a bust of Lenin, or a military uniform. The Ampelmann Galerie & Shop in Hackesche Höfe is dedicated to the figure on East German crossing lights, known as Ampelmann. There's a boot with a retractable knife in the toe." Maybe. It's a funny, moving portrait of the period; like the Ostalgie phenomenon itself, the movie is about coming to grips with childhood, memory, and history. The trend is called Ostalgie, and it means nostalgia for the East, as in the socialist East German state that fell soon after the wall came down in November 1989. On the air, Witt wore a tight top sporting the logo LOVE THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC.May 04, 2009 Almost 15 years after the fall of the Ber-lin Wall, the German Democratic Republic, a vanished country, has become a state of mind. There is even nostalgia for the Trabant, the East German car made from 1955 to 1991 and constructed mostly of plastic. There are also memorials to its more brutal realities, none more effective than the Stasi Museum, named for East Germany's infamous secret police and housed in the force's former headquarters on Berlin's Normanenstrasse. There's a museum there, too; the souvenir shop sells key chains that contain a supposed piece of the Berlin Wall. For hip Berlin youth, it's about trend, about fashion; wearing Communist-era sparkly nylon pantsuits and pointy beige bras is a mildly seditious statement with no risks. "For very young people, to remember the old days is to be cool," says Ulrika, a stylish taxi driver. The restaurant is three levels with a club in the basement, and the walls are covered with a mish-mash of decorations, including Christmas lights and skeletons. The hero spends the film searching for Spreewald pickles—a brand beloved by East Germans—for his Communist mother, who emerges from a coma and doesn't know the wall has fallen. "People were locked away for many years. Sedition as kitsch, not as politics. Cookies, candy, and cheap shoes are cool reminders of a lost homeland. Ostalgie represents a yearning for another time, when—in the rosy glow of hindsight—everyone had a job and there was more leisure time, less capitalist frenzy, and fewer assaults from a celebrity-crazed media. WHERE TO SEE OSTALGIE IN BERLINMondos Arts6 SCHREINERSTRASSE FRIEDRICHSHAIN; 49-30/4201-0778 White Trash Fast FoodLUNCH FOR TWO ; 201 TORSTRASSE, MITTE Ampelmann Galerie & Shop40 ROSENTHALERSTRASSE, MITTE; 49-30/4404-8809 1000 Kleine Dinge14-16 WEYDINGER STRASSE, MITTE; 49-30/2900-7792 Schönhauser Design18 NEUE SCHÖNHAUSER STRASSE, MITTE; 49-30/281-1704 Mega Trend Humana45 SCHÖNHAUSER ALLEE, PRENZLAUER BERG; 49-30/440-6333 Ostغير مجاز مي باشدt Shop54 LYCHENER STRASSE, PRENZLAUER BERG; 49-30/4465-3623 EastBerlin33-34 ALTE SCHÖNHAUSER STRASSE, MITTE; 49-30/2472-4189 Trabi-Safari Tours49-30/2759-2273 Café MoscowSee the old murals in the part of the café that has been turned into a nightclub. In the Ostغير مجاز مي باشدt shop, the Spreewald pickles, Othello cookies, and Mokka Fix Gold coffee—all produced by old East German companies making a comeback—taste of home.The border has since been recycled as a little theme park, where actors in uniform pose for pictures with you. In East Germany, one in three or four citizens was in some way involved. And over at Schönhauser Design—where people scavenge the back room for old orange plastic lamps and black leatherette sofas—I find myself coveting a pair of authentic Communist sunglasses. The spying was pervasive. In the unified Germany of the 21st century, there is high unemployment and high anxiety, especially in what was once the East. (I once navigated a robin's-egg-blue Trabant through Germany; it was a sardine can on wheels. The characters are obsessed with the good old, bad old days of their youth: the clothes, the patriotic songs, even the food. Beginning here and stretching for over a mile is Karl-Marx-Allee (once Stalinallee), a grandiose boulevard designed for massive military parades. If you tried to escape to the West, their dogs were given the cloth to sniff. White Trash has become a gathering spot for tourists and internationals, and it serves standard American fare, including burgers, chili, and fries, along with a few international dishes like fish and chips and burritos. White Trash Fast Food This eclectic eatery, located in Mitte, is housed inside a building that was once home to a Chinese restaurant, and much of the original furnishings still remain.

I'm mesmerized by this new, mocking nostalgia for the East, which crops up at places like White Trash Fast Food, a late-night bar in the fashionable Mitte district, with great cheeseburgers and a mix of Communist and American memorabilia. Ostalgie is, in the end, ambivalent in all its incarnations. There are other businesses around Berlin flogging Ostalgie.) Now Ampelmann is back, not only as a signal at many crossings but also as one of the symbols of the new Berlin, available on shopping bags and T-shirts. REGGIE NADELSON is the author of Somebody Else and a columnist for How to Spend It, the Financial Times magazine. Young people who were only children when the wall was up are throwing "Ost Partys" and chugging Rotkäppchen, East German bubbly. Like so much that plays off the Cold War period, Ostalgie is shot through with ambiguities, ambivalence, and profound longing for a golden time that never was. Nowhere has Ostalgie been expressed with more wit, humor, and irony than in Good Bye Lenin! the recent Golden Globe-nominated German film.) Back in the 1980's, when the Berlin Wall not only separated the city but also defined the world, I visited East Berlin half a dozen times. It's not so different from the way Americans sentimentalize fifties clothes and music without acknowledging that the era was also a period of structural rivets Manufacturers institutionalized racism in many parts of the country. They miss certain things. It looked as it was: repressive, gray, frightening, a place locked in for 28 years by its own government. (After the Berlin Wall went up in 1961, the East designed this icon, a cheery little man in a hat, more impish and welcoming than the stiff West German fellow. At the Prenzlauer Berg secondhand shop Mega Trend Humana, the pièce de résistance is a purple nylon wraparound dress, last seen in an East Berlin disco circa 1979.. For a while, as the Eastern bloc crumbled, I, too, was taken with Communist kitsch. Most sinister are the "smell jars. Ostalgie is not associated with Communism; it's about heritage. 34 KARL-MARX-ALLEE, MITTE; 49-30/2463-1626 VESTIGES OF THE OLD EAST BERLINMauermuseum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie43-45 FRIEDRICHSTRASSE, KREUZBERG; 49-30/253-7250 Stasi Museum22 NORMANENSTRASSE, LICHTENBERG; 49-30/553-6854 Eastside GalleryThe largest remaining fragment of the Berlin Wall, which runs for eight-tenths of a mile along Mühlenstrasse, is covered with paintings created in 1990 by international artists to celebrate the wall's collapse.

The show was a curious mix: partly no-holds-barred documentary footage of GDR history, partly a celebration of East German pop culture. Ostalgie is a campy, sometimes defiant, reinvention of history, and it pops up everywhere in the former Communist world: in the KGB uniforms worn by a rock band I once saw in Moscow; in the videos of ex-Soviet leaders shown at a gay bar in St. Our parents' generation knows this is much better, a free unified country, but they lost their country, their culture. I can't help thinking, What if this longing were for the 1930's and early 1940's?What if people were buying up outfits worn not by Young Pioneers but by Hitler Youth?What part of history is it acceptable to preserve, remember, cherish?When do the icons of a brutal regime become amusing souvenirs? Ostalgie raises questions much bigger than a jar of pickles. Last fall, Katarina Witt, the East German Olympic figure-skating star, appeared on TV for several weeks in her own series, GDR. Some of these dogs had no vocal cords; the Stasi removed them so the animals could attack you before you heard them coming. The fact that it's housed in a former Chinese restaurant once frequented by the Party faithful is what really gives it street cred. Intrepid tourists can embark on a Trabi-Safari, a drive-yourself tour of Berlin. When the wall came down, East Germany'sbusinesses were squashed. They are also cheap, as are the pots and pans, aprons, Rotkäppchen, candy, and cleaning products available at 1000 Kleine Dinge (1,000 Little Things), a kind of East German Woolworth." Whenever possible, the Stasi got your scent on a piece of cloth and stored it in a jar. A mile or so east,Alexanderplatz, the heart of East Berlin, shows remnants of the old days: a mosaic mural of heroic workers; the television tower; the former Stadt Hotel (now the Park Inn), a high-rise monstrosity where important visitors to the GDR stayed. At EastBerlin, a spare, recently opened boutique in Mitte, there are chic sweaters and scarves imprinted with the Alexanderplatz television tower, symbol of the East. "The culture was the creation of separation," says Stefan Elfenbein, a leading Berlin journalist. Where does the joke end and the terrible reality begin?I head for Checkpoint Charlie; East Germans trying to get over the wall were once shot dead here by their own soldiers. Discarded with disdain in the months after the wall came down, the Trabi has become a sentimental icon. But I'm not so sure that you can separate culture from politics, heritage from history. Almost a mile of that wall is left; it runs along Mühlenstrasse and is decorated with murals celebrating its fall, a kind of outdoor gallery. For older people, Ostalgie is different; for them it's an affirmation that their lives under the East German regime were not completely meaningless, and a reaction to the currently depressed economy