Good Bye Lenin!
For those of you who have not seen the film Good Bye Lenin!, I highly recommend it. As someone who has always had lingering sympathies for communist reformers (the ones like Imre Nagy in Hungary who wanted to create a more democratic socialist system), the way the main character seeks to combine the best aspects of pre- and post- 1989 Germany tugs at my heartstrings. Not to ruin the story for all of you, but it revolves around a young man in East Germany whose mother was in a coma during the fall of the Berlin Wall and all of the events surrounding it. She wakes up after a year or so of changes in the German Democratic Republic, and the doctors tell her son that any major shocks could be very dangerous for her. In order to keep the shock of the fall of communism from harming his mother, he tries to keep her in the dark, hiding the changes that have taken place and fabricating news stories for his bedridden mother.
The reason I'm telling you about all of this is two-fold. First, I want to encourage you to see an excellent film. And second, it's a round about way of introducing some photos. As Good By Lenin reveals, a lot of things changed in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. However, there are still places (a lot of them, really) where you can find the aesthetics of communism. If you are feeling "ostolgic" as they say in Germany, look no further than an un-remodeled apartment in Bucharest. Many of the apartments in the blocs that line Bucharest's streets retain their original finishings, making them lived-in relics of the communist past. Some apartments in the blocs have been remodeled and are very nice by Western standards. Before I left the apartment that I was staying in last week, I took some pictures to share with you. Obviously many of the consumer goods that are now available were not around under communism, so I'm not sure how much has changed about this apartment, but I feel confident that a lot of the fixtures remain the same. So here they are:
Bucataria- The kitchen
Balconul- The balcony
Baia- The bathroom
Sufrageria-The dining room, where I was staying, on the pullout couch in the picture.
The reason I'm telling you about all of this is two-fold. First, I want to encourage you to see an excellent film. And second, it's a round about way of introducing some photos. As Good By Lenin reveals, a lot of things changed in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. However, there are still places (a lot of them, really) where you can find the aesthetics of communism. If you are feeling "ostolgic" as they say in Germany, look no further than an un-remodeled apartment in Bucharest. Many of the apartments in the blocs that line Bucharest's streets retain their original finishings, making them lived-in relics of the communist past. Some apartments in the blocs have been remodeled and are very nice by Western standards. Before I left the apartment that I was staying in last week, I took some pictures to share with you. Obviously many of the consumer goods that are now available were not around under communism, so I'm not sure how much has changed about this apartment, but I feel confident that a lot of the fixtures remain the same. So here they are:
Bucataria- The kitchen
Balconul- The balcony
Baia- The bathroom
Sufrageria-The dining room, where I was staying, on the pullout couch in the picture.
posted by Erin Kay at 3:35 PM
1 Comments:
Except for the dining room, I find those pics strangely reminiscent of Spartan Village. Well, not your apt. so much, but the shithole I lived in.
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