[Menydh]

Originally Posted by Ederico

I would actually like to research the question accordingly as apart from name-slandering and tax-moaning I'm not informed much on the question.

I hear that the problem has decreased a little in intensity in the last decade. But it still seems to be an underlying problem and it works in both directions: Ossis vs Wessis.

It surely won't be as extreme as in the case where some years ago a girl from Bavaria at university, when we asked her about details of the German reunification, she stressed the differences between Western Germans and Eastern Germans, with clear dislike. When I told her that I couldn't believe what she was saying about her own people, she said that I did not understand and that they (Western Germans) were more similar to the other Western Europeans than to Eastern Germans.

Now you would think that she was some extremist or something. Far from the truth, she was pretty much an average Southern German girl.

I didn't think much more about it then, as I thought that it was something temporary and of little relevance, until about a year ago when I read an article which pointed to some degree of mutual dislike still existing.

See this article from 2000:

CNN.com In-Depth Specials - New Germany: Prosperity and pain

[...]

Nevertheless, it is surprising to learn how many ossies and wessies - eastern Germans and western Germans -- still stick to their old haunts.

A recent study by the Berlin public transport authorities shows that many Berliners stay within their accustomed neighbourhoods and do not venture out to eat, drink and party in those parts of the city that were once cut off by the Iron Curtain.

It is much the same for the rest of the country. In fact, some 40 percent of western Germans say they have never ventured east -- this, in a country known for citizens who trek to the end of the world on their cherished holidays.

Again and again, old prejudices pop up in daily life, such as the westerner who takes a holiday on the eastern German island of Usedom and remarks: "Last week, there were mostly westerners in our hotel. It felt much better than this week, when there were so many ossis".

Or there is the complaint by frustrated workers from the east about "besser-wessis" -- those westerners who claim to know everything better than eastern Germans.

One can almost physically sense the disillusionment when visiting some of the eastern towns, where up to a third of the people are unemployed.

Many people from the east have made it and founded new companies or found good jobs - often in the west.

Still, the latest polls show that some 50 percent of eastern Germans still feel like second-class citizens. And they still consider themselves eastern Germans first and citizens of a united country second.

However, only a few question German unification itself -- even if though so many problems still need to be resolved, and even though complete unity still seems years away.