Der „Wilde Osten“ oder: Die 1990er Jahre in touristischen Stadtführungen in Ostmitteleuropa

The “Wild East” – or: The 1990s in Guided City Tours in Central and Eastern Europe. Using the example of recent English-language communism tours in Central and Eastern Europe, this article presents the transformation from communism to democracy as told in the international tourism industry. Young guides, being themselves “children of the transformation”, portray the 1990s as a strange time and period of “anything goes”. Along with various practices of (self-)exoticization, a fundamental paradox of such “alternative” city tours is discussed – namely, the fact that many guides articulate a critical view of how the economic transformation took place and openly criticize the excesses of global capitalism. At the same time, they are them-selves successful entrepreneurs in a niche of the tourism industry that makes its profit from interpreting precisely these contradictions.