I pulled that future out of the north wind at the landfill site, stamped with today’s date, riding the air with other such futures, all unlived in and now fully extinct. The future was a beautiful place, once. — Simon Armitage, Vision. 

  Have you ever considered what it would feel like if the country you grew up in, you live in, suddenly ceased to exist? If all your dreams for the future - your future, your country's future - disappear and you are faced with a new reality; with a culture shock in your own home and no possibility of simply going home? After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the formal German reunification a year later, most East Germans faced this exact scenario. The GDR ceased to exist and the new Germany was defined by the West. The dominant narrative declared the GDR an Unrechtsstaat - an unjust state, a dictatorship - and traces of the failed socialist regime and Eastern culture became unpopular or even undesired.

Many buildings and monuments related to socialism or the GDR have been torn down or destroyed - today we will look for some remaining historic places and talk about what has been lost.