Staying in a fallout shelter: exploring ostalgia through post-socialist heterotopia.

This article details our attempts at making sense of an ostalgic heterotopic space. We relay here our analysis of staying in and exploring a disused air raid shelter built during WWII, converted into a fallout shelter at the beginning of the Cold War and recently repurposed in an anti-communist museum/tourist hotel/ostalgic canteen called 10Z Bunker. As we enter the subterranean tunnels packed with memorabilia from an indistinct ‘past’, we strive to shed some light on the dim heterotopic space we found. We explore the intersection of material objects and partly refurbished underground spaces and employ the concept of heterotopia to understand how ostalgia is enmeshed with anti-communism in this commodified history display. We argue that the heterotopic (and heterochronic) nature of the display allows for stripping ostalgia of its disruptive potential to challenge the prevailing narratives of Western domination and using it to further the anti-communist meaning promulgated by the 10Z Bunker.