Who wants in? We can talk about what is was like to write a letter to your grandma or having no other way to ask someone out other than by calling them on the phone. Or checking out movies at Blockbuster or whatever your national equivalent was (we usually checked out videos at the grocery store, actually).

We’re cool because we can actually remember the USSR and “East” Germany. Although not as cool, I can remember when homophobia and transphobia was so much more widely accepted and the “default” position for most Americans. Not as cool.

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[–] ChrisLicht@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

If you haven’t been through Checkpoint Charlie and shopped at GUM, you’re not really an oldhead.

[–] star_wraith@hexbear.net 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

One of the little pleasures of becoming commie is recalling how the GDR was portrayed in the US as some horrific nightmare state at least as awful as the DPRK is today; only to find out that, even though they had some problems, it was actually a pretty chill place to live (if anything complaints I’ve heard from former residents of the GDR was that life was a bit too boring).

An example of what I mean btw… our church had a missionary to West Germany that visited. He told us in the East, there was a bus of schoolchildren from the West driving through. The police boarded their bus and found a Bible, so they pulled all the kids out and shot them. Literally all the grown ups in my church uncritically believed this story.

[–] ChrisLicht@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

FWIW, it was grey as fuck, the time tax to get basic life done was pretty absurd—and typically fell on women, and the controls on movement were suffocating.

I wouldn’t wish the GDR or USSR back into being, nor would I wish this capitalist shit-show on anyone.

[–] JuneFall@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

the time tax to get basic life done was pretty absurd—and typically fell on women

The "time tax" in the FRG on women was higher with the demands for sole child care with relatively little external child caring services from the ages of 0-18 (and schools which weren't open long).

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