“We never worried about not having a place to live or a job, or about being evicted. There were no worries or fears about our livelihoods and there was so much in the way of culture and recreation that was available most of the time at little or no cost.”
She said that “attempts were always made not only that you had a job but that it was the best job you could do and whenever possible a job you really liked.”
Zastrow explained that she disliked the technical aspects of her schooling, despite the fact that they were providing her with skills that were quite useable. “I love animals,” she said, “and really wanted to have a career working with them.” She described how “there were needs for everything in the GDR, for people who could do all kinds of things and they worked to get me a job that I loved, a job on a large agricultural dairy collective where I had such good times working with more than 300 cows!”
Wtf I am pining for a life I never got to live. Let alone what the East Germans lost. It's such a tragedy, what the capitalists have done to the world. Proves that all capitalism has to offer at this point is technology/technocracy to compensate for our material and cultural deprivation. Everything I've read or heard about ordinary life in the GDR, USSR, Yugoslavia, etc points to the fact that the communist countries have consistently been the most advanced in terms of social technology. I guess we've got phones and flatscreen TVs that we can hardly afford? F