> 1) The city was 100% Steampunk ! District heating was quite common across the former Eastern Bloc and Russia. In the winter, you could see bands of melted sn

> 1) The city was 100% Steampunk ! District heating was quite common across the former Eastern Bloc and Russia. In the winter, you could see bands of melted snow on the sidewalk where the pipes ran. I hear the ones still in use have been better insulated since then. > i did see plenty of missing houses in the main streets. Yeah, this I've also been told. Compare that with the impressive rate at which Polish cities were rebuilt (aside from the beautiful historic centers, we can debate about the desirability of the modernist architecture that was built in places where it was decided that the historical building was not to be rebuilt; some of them are actually quite interesting, to be sure, but certainly not all of them). Not sure why the GDR took so long, or how they fared next to West Germany.