Ostalgie

Available for over a year

Business Daily goes behind the old Iron Curtain to sample business life twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. On November 9, twenty years ago, East Germany announced that its citizens could move freely to the West. People from both sides - known as "mauerspechte" or wall woodpeckers - chipped and knocked the concrete off the Wall, but this was symbolic. The real end was the decision to open the gates. Unconstrained East Germans headed west and filled their spluttering Trabant cars with tooth-paste and clothes and all kinds of hitherto unavailable Western goods. Twenty years on, the glitter of Western delights has faded, and Eastern Germany's own brands are making a come back. We speak to Torsten Heine who brought one of those brands - Zeha trainers - back. We talk to East German consumers who like East German goods. And to a Hungarian who's done nicely from capitalism but fears that his fellow citizens just don't get it. And with so much conflicting evidence and opinion on just what our economic prospects are at the moment our sparkling new commentator, John Cassidy of the New Yorker unravels the conundrum.