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):