Posted on 07/01/2007 4:40:02 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
BERLIN (Reuters Life!) - Visitors to the German capital who are disappointed by the scant remains of the Berlin Wall can get a taste of the old days at a new communist-style hotel which revives the atmosphere of East Germany.
In a multi-storey concrete block near the city's eastern train station, former communist leader Erich Honecker, wearing his trademark thick black glasses, stares down at guests from the walls of each of the 39 rooms.
Garish orange patterned curtains and retro brown sofas clash with lime green walls. Plastic plants and old-style lamps stand by windows overlooking more concrete blocks and the clocks at reception show the time in Moscow, Beijing and Havana.
"Ostel", which opened on May 1 -- Workers Day -- is the dreamchild of two circus acrobats-turned-entrepreneurs who say it is proving to be a hit.
"I am not sure why no one did this before but business is going really well," said co-owner Guido Sand, who claims to be 33 "give or take". He said he made a profit in the first month.
"We are even selling the Honecker pictures as souvenirs now because guests were stealing them."
Ostel, a play on the German words for "east" and "hotel", builds on nostalgia for the former east which took off a decade or so after the fall of the Wall and which was epitomized in the comedy film "Goodbye Lenin".
As memories of the bleaker and more brutal aspects of the Cold War fade, Ostel's success shows "Ostalgie" -- nostalgia for the communist East -- is thriving.
"After the demise of East Germany, people got rid of their furniture fast and went to IKEA. They lost part of their identity, now they like seeing the old stuff again," said Sand, who says he is not making a political point.
"This is not about rewriting history. It is just fun."
Sand, who has no complaints about his life as an acrobat in East Germany's state circus, said he had received no criticism for setting up the hotel.
He and his colleague, Daniel Helbig, took a year to turn their dream into reality and scoured relatives' homes, E-Bay and flea markets to find the furniture and memorabilia they needed.
Sand says the hotel attracts international tourists as well as people from all over Germany. He is considering setting up similar hotels in the eastern cities of Leipzig and Dresden.
Price may also be a factor in the hotel's success. Guests pay just 9 euros ($12.10) a night for staying in a 4-6 bed "Pioneer Camp Dormitory". Other rooms, some with 1950s decor, others from the 1970s, go for between 38 and 59 euros.
More sinister to some is the Stasi suite, named after the once-dreaded East German secret police. It is decorated with actual furniture from Wandlitz, a closed-off Berlin suburb for the former ruling elite.
"I don't know if ex-Stasi people stay. They were trained well to disguise themselves, so I can't tell," said Sand.
Do the TVs in the rooms explode if you leave them on too long? Is the toilet paper rough?
Thats what I always heard about the eastern bloc.
They had TVs and toilet paper? Decadence run amok, no wonder communism failed! ;-)
A: Cos its rough and its tough and it don't take sh.t offa nobody.
Are the rooms bugged?
yup, the 8 legged kind
twenty or thirty years ago, I remember a speaker at our church telling us about a visit to the eastern bloc.
He told us that..well..there were garbage cans by the toilets because the sewage system wasnt strong enough to suck down the wet TP.
btt
They got that in Canada, too.
The day of the first communist-themed amusement park may not be far away. I can just imagine a ride through the “Gulag House of Horrors”.
YIKES!
Do they roust the guests at 3:00 a.m. and beat them with rubber hoses and then photgraph them in compromising positions with paid hookers for later blackmail purposes?
They could just go to Russia...
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