Transformed Flat In Marzahn Feels Like Walk-in Time Capsule Of The GDR

Twenty years after the fall of the Wall, Berlin's skyline remains dominated by the legacy of the grand Socialist dream.

Beyond the central districts, where soviet buildings mix with older, gentrified apartments, the eastern part of the city fans out towards the horizon in row after row of high-rise blocks.

Cheap, quick to assemble, and "collectivist" in ethos, these pre-fabricated tower blocks, nicknamed plattenbauten, or "slab buildings," offered a quintessentially soviet solution to housing demands in the 1970s.

In Berlin, where war and neglect created a gaping housing deficit, they were thrown up at a rate of 4,000 apartments a year. In the 1980s, the waiting time for a flat was up to 10 years.

In the years following reunification, many apartment blocks were left empty. While some buildings, like the ORWO music centre on the aptly named Frank Zappa Straße, were appropriated by artists, other plattenbauten fell into disrepair.

Today, the buildings are being gutted and redeveloped. Yet on a quiet estate in the Marzahn district, one snapshot of the past still remains.

The Museumswohnung (museum apartment) on Hellersdorfer Strasse is the creation of housing association Stadt und Land. When they began refurbishments on a dilapidated block in 2004, they transformed one flat into a walk-in time capsule. Original linoleum lines the floor, the fridge is restocked with GDR products, and a 1989 calendar hangs on the wall.

Like an elderly relative, the antiquated Museumswohnung invites visitors on Sunday afternoons only. Visits at other times are possible, but you have to call in advance.

When you ring the bell, you are welcomed into the hall by a guide- in my case, the garrulous Wolfgang Sawatzki, who lived in a similar flat in the 1980s. I arrived accompanied by another ex-tenant, Rainer Schultz, who offered to come with me to verify the faithfulness of the recreation.

On entering the flat, Rainer voices his approval.

"This all looks exactly as it was," he tells me. As if to prove it to his family later, he takes photos as we move between the four rooms - kitchen, living room, and two bedrooms.

Both he and Wolfgang elucidate every aspect of the apartment with a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge. From memory, they tell me the exact dimensions of the floor, the width of each wall and the precise locations of all the pipes. Wolfgang shows me how to jump start the thermostat by jamming a pfennig into the fitting, and Rainer points out the only point in the wall you could hammer a nail in without drilling into the concrete.

The reconstruction has been painstakingly completed. Each drawer or cupboard is carefully stacked with original magazines and toys, and an Amiga cassette is humming in the background. The daily lives of an imaginary family are laid out to view, object by object. In a drawer in a bedroom, you find medals for excellent performance at work. In the living room, there's a half-full book of "solidarity stamps" which, Wolfgang informs me, could be donated to a social cause in a communist brotherland.

For Wolfgang and Rainer, it's their own lives that are presented back at them, and I wonder how they feel about visitors treating their private experiences as some sort of historical oddity.

Wolfgang seems pleased by the attention: "The other week a group of Norwegians drove up in Trabis," he tells me excitedly, referring to the Trabant, the standard issue GDR car which has recently returned to the streets as the preferred vehicle of the "ostalgie" tourist. Ostalgie, or nostalgia for the east, has become big business in recent years, but not without some controversy.

Schultz also seems untroubled by this new breed of history tourism.

When I ask him if he finds it strange, he looks at me blankly.

"No," he replies. "It's interesting, isn't it?"

In spite of my qualms, I can't help but agree with him.

Originally from the rolling hills of Derby, Rachel Beddow studied English Literature at the University of Oxford before leaving the UK in 2007 to study a Masters in Literature and Cultural Studies at the Freie Universität in Berlin. Her interests include literature, human rights, and the occasional foray into celebrity gossip. For the NPR Berlin Blog, Rachel will be writing about Berlin's lesser known historical sites and literature.