These fucking dipshits lol, its winter, so the trees are missing leaves and there’s coal smog on everything, which was in wide use in the west just as it was in the east because it was cheap and domestically abundant. The reason it held on longer in the east after reunification is because the east was economically hollowed out and coal continued to be cheap compared to retrofitting in modern heating.
Here’s a picture from the late 60s(?) that’s not in winter (though it unfortunately frames out the large trees that are visible in the foreground of the reddit OP):
No, it doesn’t. Look at the yellow train and the blue clothing people are wearing in the OP, the colors pop pretty well. The difference is primarily that it’s winter in one and not the other, so the the trees don’t have leaves and there is more coal smoke in the air/overcast weather
its about the same as it was in the 80s, maybe a bit better. There are trees, although not too many immediately in and around the station area. Some added along Eberswalder st, but some along Pappelallee, planted in the 50s or 60s, seem to have gotten too big and have actually been removed. It seems like a nice area, and its silly to pretend like it just flipped from horrible and depressing to great and modern sometime in the 90s, when the bones of the neighborhood are the same.
Anywhere at this latitude would look bad if you took a photo like this at the wrong time of year. For example: