We've been living on Karl-Marx-Allee for 35 years and we like it here. Our apartment is next to the flower shop. These days our daily route is confined to this street due to my husband's disability.

Karl-Marx-Allee is pretty accessible, there's no stairs and you can move easily with the wheelchair, even all the way to Alexanderplatz. The tree population is quite nice, even though parts of the greenery are not that well taken care of lately. One of the main changes along the street is the fact that many of the stores are standing empty nowadays. But the apartments are pretty much occupied, mostly by people over 60 who are holding onto older contracts. Some restaurants and bars are opening but they don't always take into account the surrounding population, they are more for young people, so they end up having to close after a while. The ongoing construction in the middle of the street creates a lot of noise but inside the apartments you don't notice it since the windows were replaced in 2000 by soundproof ones. We know a lot of people on the street so you don't live anonymously here like in other places.