Germany: Dresden traces of the GDR

When trying to decide where we should go in Germany to get that second look I need for comparison, the decision was not really all that hard. I was anxious to see what had happened over the last 20 years in the old east Germany. In Dresden I would have some basis for comparison, having visited the city in 1979.  A hint of some of the changes we would see, we had already had in Berlin. Half of that city had been in the GDR, but it would take a pretty keen eye to be able to visually distinguish between Berlin neighborhoods today. There really is not much difference between East and West Berlin.

In Dresden, the changes have been a bit slower in coming. As you know from previous posts, there has been a lot of reconstruction of the historic buildings.  That part of town looks more like 1890 than 1990 (the year the wall came down). In the other parts of town the legacy of the GDR is not fading so rapidly into the past. In many parts of the city you still find the excessively wide streets that have far more capacity than is needed for current traffic loads, but were needed for May Day tank parades. It appears that the bulk of the residents still live in the massive block structure apartment complexes preferred for both economic and ideological reasons throughout the Soviet bloc.

If you remember, when we were in Moscow we stayed in just such a building. You can cram a bunch of people into a small space, but it creates an odd cityscape. Huge buildings separated by huge empty spaces. Possible only where land has little value and people have little choice.

Slowly, it seems some of these structures are coming down and being redeveloped but it is a slow process. Kind of like the Socialist mural on the side of the city's theater complex, it seems they are allowing the old GDR to fade away slowly on its own through benign neglect. Someday, when it gets bad enough they will replace it.