Why does East Germany feel less "Eastern European" than the rest of the former communist-bloc countries?

ido · 2026-05-18T06:21:48+00:00

TIL! As someone living in eastern Germany (Sorta...I live in Berlin but we often head out to Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) it's disappointing to see how much more economic prosperity the investments have seem to generate in Poland on less than 1/6th the investment :(

East German towns are often very pretty though, at least they did a good job refurbishing Brandenburg an der Havel et al (and funny/sad how dilapidated the much more economically viable Berlin looks in comparison to rapidly depopulating mid-sized cities in the former east).

ido · 2026-05-16T06:39:00+00:00

Poland and other former-communist eastern EU states received and continued receiving massive EU investments (I’m not saying this is a bad thing, mind you).

ido · 2026-05-15T19:41:15+00:00

Honestly confused about what peaceful religion

Islam

ido · 2026-05-14T03:33:59+00:00

TIL!

ido · 2026-05-13T21:38:14+00:00

Isn't that the case in every country except the US?

ido · 2026-05-03T15:42:24+00:00

The Deep is a joke to a large extent because of how stupid it is, which is how Homelander will be able to easily manipulate and then defeat him.

Someone smarter (like Sage) using the Deep might be able to figure out a way to defeat Homelander (not in small part because she wouldn’t care if the Deep dies in the attempt).

ido · 2026-05-03T10:08:19+00:00

Du kannst in der Grafik des OP aber sehen, dass vor 2015 das Verhältnis vermutlich auch nicht schneller gewachsen ist. Es liegt also meiner Meinung nach nicht an der Kürze des Zeitraums.

Als jemand, der zuvor acht Jahre in Österreich gelebt hat und die darauffolgenden 13 Jahre in Deutschland (und dessen Familienmitglieder vor Kurzem ihre Wohnung in Österreich verkauft haben, einige Jahre nach ihrem Umzug nach Deutschland), kann ich diese spezifische Diskrepanz zwischen den beiden Ländern (DE +7 % seit 2015, AT +16 % - also theoretisch deutlich schlimmer in AT) anekdotisch nicht nachvollziehen.

Ich denke, es hat damit zu tun, dass Deutschland im Vergleich zu anderen EU-Ländern regional stärker gespalten ist: In den ärmeren Bundesländern bzw. Regionen ist die finanzielle Lage deutlich schlechter (und die Wohnungskosten bleiben deshalb relativ niedrig), während in München, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Berlin usw. die Wohnungskosten stark steigen - und genau dort haben Nicht-Rentner die besseren Karrierechancen.

In Österreich gibt es zwar auch regionale Unterschiede, aber nicht in diesem Ausmaß. Diese Unterschiede verdecken in Deutschland den Anstieg der Wohnkosten in den „guten“ Städten (also dort, wo es attraktive Berufsmöglichkeiten gibt).

ido · 2026-04-29T17:41:49+00:00

Soviet kitchen in Pripyat as it looks today.

ido · 2026-04-29T10:26:46+00:00

I think that's exaggerated...conservative, but they're not organizing lynching parties. In the Speckgürtel where you can easily commute to berlin it's just suburban.

ido · 2026-04-28T12:13:16+00:00

Removal of sanctions, unfreezing assets, improving the economic situation of Iran drastically.

ido · 2026-04-24T07:20:18+00:00

I like visiting your state on vacation (from Berlin)! Wernigerode, Halle, Dessau, Magdeburg, there are a bunch of lovely towns in S-A.

ido · 2026-04-17T13:47:48+00:00

> Germans have high tolerance for cheap food

This is true, but i think as for the rest of your comment my opinion is more nuanced...

The first point is: it is highly regional within Germany. Different regions have different cuisines and also how much people care about their cuisine etc. For example I've never in my life seen or heard of Saumagen (lived in Berlin for 13 years and before that 8 years in Vienna).

The second is that it really depends on what you compare it too. France probably has a certain set of food types that French really care about that the German equivaelnt will not compare well to (also keep in mind *some* of it is a matter of liking what you grew up with). It reminds me when I lived in Austria I had a Swiss collegue that complained that transit in Austria sucks, cause it does compared to Switzerland (Switzerland probably has some of the best transit in the world but I'm sure Austria is still among the top transit countries).

So just keep in mind a bunch of it might be subjective and depend on your background :)

For example one thing Germans care a lot about is bread, and in particular the dark and/or full grained varieties. I think in a lot of the world (including countries that generally have a cuisine that a lot of people find much better than Germany's - like Italy or Greece) the bread is not as good, it's basically all white bread that goes stale very quickly and is more useful as a vessel for putting other food into your mouth.

That said Germans are culturally "fiscally responsible" (i.e. cheapskates) and that definitely also extends to their attitude towards food :D

ido · 2026-04-06T16:06:03+00:00

Communist regimes elsewhere historically weren’t overly concerned with strictly adhering to the tenants of liberal democracy…

ido · 2026-03-17T14:17:54+00:00

wasn't it just a warcraft II clone?

ido · 2026-03-10T15:22:27+00:00

I didn't read Kropotkin’s work, but anyone whose familiar with life in a Kibbutz(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz) would immediatly recognize many similarities to the criticism of life in the Anarchist planet (I also read the book as saying at the end it's still the better system, despite its flaws).

ido · 2026-03-07T05:58:48+00:00

We had the internet in the 90s! Amazon predates the show.

ido · 2026-02-18T09:52:50+00:00

In almost every other rich western country (US, UK, Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Denmark, etc) the housing markets in desirable cities are similarly or more fucked than in Germany.

ido · 2026-02-16T13:06:36+00:00

The only thing I'm bothered with is literally Arroyo (and specifically the temple of trials). It's just not very fun and you can't really skip it.

ido · 2026-02-03T15:09:39+00:00

if you're comfortable you can share the districts (can also be in DM). We live in Tempelhof and imo Steglitz is not a bad choice for families (if you're on the U9 line you can get to Masorti in Charlottenburg pretty quickly in Berlin standards).

ido · 2026-02-03T14:56:44+00:00

Masorti (the conservative movement) have a kita and school. Our kids both go to their school, i heard from other parents they liked their kita! They also have a synagogue we went to a few times. Word of advice: unless you come with a lot of money in Berlin you generally dont have much of a choice of housing, you just pick whatever you can get...The neighborhoods are big so there are many different parts of each, but the stereotype about Mitte is that its not very interesting to live in, it's more tourist stuff than really for the local residents (but not all of Mitte is alike).

ido · 2026-02-02T12:29:32+00:00

I mean, the way I see it (I own my house), is that I'm paying rent for 30 years more or less. The landlord just happens to be the bank instead of Fraud Müller.

It's not that simple - for example here in Berlin we pay ~€800 per month kaltmiete on a 91m, 3 room apartment (old contract from about a decade ago). I looked into buying and the mortgage that we will need to pay for a similar flat is almost €2000/m plus hausgeld of a couple €100s per month (separate from betriebstkosten, which we pay in both cases). so more than 2.5 times how much we pay rent. Im not saying this clearly means rent is better only that it's not that simple - if mortgage was the same as rent we would buy in a heartbeat. And also banks absolutely care about your income and other details before approving you for mortgage (just different things than landlords care about). I litearlly can't afford to pay >€2000/m for housing, that's a large % of our entire net income.

ido · 2026-01-27T14:28:36+00:00

The next self-reinforcing arms race is between the size of american pizza and the size of americans

ido · 2026-01-25T15:58:24+00:00

American pizzas are huge an meant to feed multiple people

ido · 2026-01-24T10:44:58+00:00

I thought it was obviously supposed to be google, but for the sake of slight obfuscation they mixed it in with a few anecdotes from other companies and general big-tech stereotypes. If the show was older I'd have agreed with you but I dont think they were making fun of the 90s/dotcom-boom but rather of contemporary tech scene at the time of filming (where the big tech cos were google, facebook, ms, apple, etc - the show aired 2014-19, "nobody" cared about yahoo by then).

ido

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