I visited Czechoslovakia and East a few times when the Wall was still up. The biggest impression was how gray and drab everything was in the cities. It seemed everything was gray and covered with a thin layer of dirt. Very depressing. The countrysides were just neglected and decrepit. Also depressing in a different way.
I grew up in Czechoslovakia and I remember vividly how we visited Austria shortly after the fall of iron curtain. Everything seemed so clean and colorful and well maintained - it was shocking. I saw billboards for the first time in my life and they seemed incredibly beautiful to me. Until that visit I never realized how gray and falling apart was my normal environment (I was 13 at the time) - it seemed normal and I assumed it was like that everywhere.
Yeah, flaking of facades not repaired in decades used to be the norm, with some of them even still having shot holes from the last days of WWII! And all that covered by soot from all the many houses burning poor quality coal.
It took many years after The Fall to put things in order and now such a facade is the exception, not the norm.
Still, there is that one house with nicely painted iron fence clearly showing WWII bullet holes, from a long forgotten firefight.
