"OSTALGIE" was all the rage a few years back. Artefacts of life in the old East Germany took on a strange cultural resonance. Laments were heard for the Trabant, the ill-constructed car that had spawned a thousand breakdowns in the communist days. The Ampelmännchen , the cheery behatted green man whose appearance signalled to Ossis that they could safely cross the road, was restored to all Berlin's pedestrian crossings. Cinema-goers across the world flocked to see "Good Bye Lenin!".Among Czechs and Slovaks, however, nostalgia for the communist era didn't really take off. A survey conducted in 2009 to mark the 20anniversary of the Velvet Revolution found that most Czechs (68%) and Slovaks (53%) thought that capitalist democracy had given them more than the “real-existing socialism” they enjoyed before 1989.But remnants of the old ways are still to be found everywhere. Czechs and Slovaks continue to nibble on Horalky wafers and wash dishes with JAR detergent. Why? In some cases, simply because they are used to them.

Other communist-era products have reinvented themselves with shiny labels and catchy slogans. A few have even become chic enough to appeal to youngsters with little or no memory of their previous incarnations. Kofola, once a socialist substitute for Coca-Cola and Pepsi, is a star among Czech brands on Facebook. It beats Pilsner Urquell, the showcase Czech beer, by some 80,000 supporters.



Also sought after are “jarmilky”: ballerina-style gym shoes. Since the 1960s, girls and women have worn them to sports events, including the mass athletic meets known as “spartakiady”. These days, scores of websites offer varities of jarmilky, for about €8. For some young women, of an "emo" bent, they have acquired a certain cachet.



Altogether weirder is the revival of the collective package holiday. In the pre-'89 days the Communist Revolutionary Trade Union Movement (ROH) used to offer workers a break as a reward for a year's toil in offices, factories or mines. Today, in return for a modest sum, Czechs and Slovaks wishing to rekindle those memories can stay at the gloomy Hotel Morava in the High Tatra mountains, featuring a bust of Stalin in the lobby. There they will be able to enjoy such attractions as a 7am open-air exercise workout to revolutionary songs or a mock May Day parade. This year the hotel will accept four groups of holidaying masochists throughout the summer months.



Television has got in on the act, too. In the Czech Republic, Barrandov, a digital channel, has been attracting viewers with repeats of communist-era programmes like “Thirty Cases of Major Zeman” (see picture), a crime series launched in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion in 1968 to improve the poor image of the police. The programme has become a sort of cult, with a fan club and a flock of theme restaurants in Prague, Brno and Bratislava. Barrandov's next move is to air “Natives”, a programme commissioned in 1988 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the communist takeover in Czechoslovakia.



Analysts insist that this is nostalgia for youth rather than for communism. But Oľga Gyárfášová, a sociologist at IVO, a Slovak think-tank, describes the phenomenon as "retroactive optimism", suggesting that some selective memory may be at play. The fear is that reducing four decades of dictatorship to a bunch of retro fads risks distracting the younger generation from the darker aspects of life under a system of which they have few or no direct memories.



In 2009 Václav Havel, the hero of liberation in 1989 and the first president of post-communist Czechoslovakia, said that it might take decades for central and east European societies to come to terms with the trauma of their communist pasts.



Prague and Bratislava seem to be aware of that. “Strictly Confidential”, Slovakia's first comprehensive exhibition on the methods of the secret police, has just opened in the Slovak National Museum. The government has also been contemplating a new museum of communism. The Czechs have taken the path of education through entertainment: last year “ID Card”, a film that mapped the adolescence of four boys in the 1970s era of "normalisation", achieved stunning box-office success in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia. We can all raise a glass of Kofola to that.