Karl-Marx-Allee, Friedrichshain

And when I was in Dresden friends of mine were so apologetic about those prefab neubauten you mention (being in a Baroque city, of course). I had to explain that they weren't all that different from a lot of architecture here. And they SAY they condemned them because they were unsound. In a lot of cases that was just an excuse to erase history. THey also changed a lot of street names (Ernst Thaelman, for one)

Also, one giveaway of Nazi-era buildings (aside from the bullet holes) is that they liked to use a particular kind of marble with brown pitted holes in it - nicknamed Hitlermarble, 

And when I was in Dresden friends of mine were so apologetic about those prefab neubauten you mention (being in a Baroque city, of course). I had to explain that they weren't all that different from a lot of architecture here.

Visiting Caen is a somewhat strange experience; it resembles Canadian cities more than any other place in France I've seen.  The main reason is that the buildings are all new, a consequence of the 12th SS and 21st Panzer Division's determination to keep the place out of Canadian hands following D-day.

@ al-Q

I had a similar experience visiting Kitimat. Going to the town centre I thought I had stepped into East Germany with all its 50s-futuristic architecture.

And I probably wouldn't recognize some parts of Berlin now. I have been there a number of times, but it has been 10 years (Potsdamer Platz was an open field where they held flea markets). And in 1992 there were squatters in every inch of the strip where the former wall ran - some of them in organized communities (a very interesting one hear Oranienburgerstr.) , but other people sleeping rough in old firetrucks, tanks, and even military jet sections that littered no-mans land.

I've never been to Berlin, alas. I've only been to westerly cities along the Rhine and its tributaries. Something else to travel for!

Though nowadays I have great misgivings about any air travel unless it is for work or political reasons (yes, ironically conferences on fighting ... climate change!)

But if I am crossing the ocean for reasons other than personal pleasure, I will be pleased to take the train to Berlin someday. Though I also want to see a very different German-speaking capital, Vienna.

I'll get to Berlin and the East eventually.

Meanwhile, spend a few days later this month with friends in Freiburg, Black Forest, and Mannheim- in the Peoples Republic of Baden-Wuttenberg.

Of all the street names that they changed, does anybody know if they renamed RosaLuxemburgstrasse?  That would be a particular tragedy since Rosa's ideas had nothing whatosever to do with what the DDR ended up being like.

I always figured that if Rosa actually came back to life and set up a soapbox on her street during the Cold War, the Stasi would've killed her again as soon as she opened her mouth.

Good.  Rosa needs to be remembered.  She's alive and well in Madrid and Athens these days.

This is going to sound very whiny, so just a disclaimer, I'm going back to Berlin and Germany when I get a chance because overall I loved the parts of Germany I went to. But I didn't really love Berlin. I was in Germany, including Berlin, a few weeks later than Catchfire and recently got back. Maybe I'm weird, maybe I had too much fun thus far and maybe my expectations of Berlin were far too highly peaked before going. But I liked western Germany way better. Of course I'd go again, so I'm not saying I disliked it, I just feel that Berlin is a little overrated and pretentious.

Of course the architecture is much more interesting than most things here, the history is far more compelling and the culture far more vibrant too, but I felt that at least in the Mitte area it was a little pretentious and corny. There was this weird vibe that I got that they were quite aware of how "cool" they are and played it up to a point where it wasn't really that cool anymore. I was also a little dissapointed with how new much of the city is because it really papers over the history. It made it seem far too (western) North American. I dunno, does that make any sense? There was this bizzare "artist squat" called Tachles that was clearly fake and didn't really fit into that hugely gentrified former part of east Berlin. It took going much further afield in the city to find the more organically cool stuff. Oddly in the infamous Lichtenberg district.

Also, while that was a pretty awesome picture, I felt that at least when it came to the socialist inspired architecture it was more so interesting as in a curiosity to me, than actually attractive. It's actually interesting how similar and drab it was, sort of like the terrible glass towers plaguing Vancouver. There was a lot of beautiful architecture, but most of the apartment blocks didn't fit into that category. Most of the other pre-fab buildings that were off the 'celebratory boulevards' were very ugly to say the least and all that they seem to have done aesthetically is paint them different colours. The thing that kind of bothered me about many of them, say around Alexanderplatz, is that despite the area being very pedestrian dependent it was very pedestrian unfriendly the impact of which is expanded at night.

Hey, I left my skinny jeans and velcro high tops at home!

But yeah, I think the key to any city though is getting to know the locals. So that was the thing that was missing from my trip: a local friend. I will have to convince someone to move to Berlin so I can have them show me around.

It's very difficult to escape the cliche stuff when you have no local contacts because then you're, by default, forced into the touristy stuff. Luckly though, I discovered a pretty cool and low-key tour company, albeit on the last night of my trip, which was much better than one of its main competitors that I shall not name. The latter company and was good in other cities (i.e. Amsterdam) but not so much in Berlin. BTW, when I say tour I don't mean sitting in a bus as someone points out the obvious and ridiculous tourists wearing the ubiquitous, socks with sandals, oversized cameras hanging from their necks and stupid clothing signalling their countries of origin plastered all over it (I cringe when people do that with the Canadian flag) gawking at things.

As for the newness of the city, I totally understand why they'd want to move on from the Nazi and Communist era's, so I don't fault them for that. But as someone who has an appreciation for history it's a little disappointing when you hear that some of the most iconic stuff has been removed, or turned into parkades (i.e. the Hitler Bunker, or the Palast der Republik).

I'm in the Peoples Republic of Baden-Wuttenberg- high up in the Schwarzwald. Its very cool here by the way. Nah nah.

I prefer the pace in the cities of the South... especially being based up here with the goats.

The cities along the line Rhine were generally as leveled as Berlin- excepting Heidelberg which the Americans wanted to live in.

Notable in rebuilding are Frieburg where everything except the cathedral was destroyed. But as in most other cities down here, they conciously decided to rebuild the same. Its a lovely city, and its difficult to tell the few surviving central city buildings from everything else.

Mannheim on the other hand made the decision to start over. The center is weird with its strict gridwork with all the blocks elegantly named- F3, F4...P1, P2... A partial ring of large lovely Renaissance buildings did survive. But Mannheims big feature is that despite being a large city it has a HUGE amount of highly accesible public green space along the Rhine... within easy walk or bike distance for everyone on a daily basis.

It was funny when I found out that a guy who spent a fair bit of time on our couch in Ontario is the very well known Green MP who speerheaded the fight against the new Stuttgart train station- the street battles around which were one decisive factor in killing the CDU government. Sounds like he was too independent in his politics to make it into Cabinet.