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Saturday, 8 November 2003
East and West Berlin ::
My colleague and I have been staying at a hotel in former East Berlin. Last night’s pizza place had what one of our companions jokingly called a “communist” atmosphere (in the U.S. I might just think of it “alternative,” as in Santa Cruz or Ithaca). The neighborhood here is an odd mixture of 7 to 15-story drab concrete tenemants (probably from the 60's and 70's), with a new Park Plaza hotel, new shops—signs of the creeping gentrification we’ve been told is the hallmark of the new East Berlin. ...