When I went over to Germany for my Oma's 80th birthday in 2001 or so my girlfriend (now wife) and I made a trip out of it and were going from the party (which was in Bavaria, though my grandparents are from Mainz) to Berlin afterwards to visit friends and check out the city. When I was telling my Opa and his friend about our plans, his Bavarian friend remarked something like "Ah, yes, Berlin, it's not very nice now, it's pretty ugly and dirty, but we're working hard to fix it. It will be much better in 10 years."

We then went to Berlin and had a wonderful time similar to what you're describing. It was still a pretty chaotic and interesting city, with lots of art squats and cool parties. Probably not as cool as it was a few years earlier, but still pretty neat.

I understand in the intervening years Berlin has started to become a sea of condos and boring glass buildings and inflated real estate like every other western city. Or so I hear. So yeah, they "fixed" it.

That same trip we passed through Leipzig and it seemed pretty run down but kind of interesting bit obviously not as "active" as Berlin. My techno friend had good things to say about it, though.