But such stories do little to soften the bitterness among many eastern Germans.
Does it make clear that 80 to 85 percent of retail businesses have been sold to eastern Germans?
In public, they denounce the idea of paying eastern Germans to work.
As explosive, and far more complicated, is the absorption of 17 million eastern Germans.
This had the effect of making family visits by the displaced eastern Germans to their lost homelands now more or less possible.
But it is eastern Germans who have an almost atavistic connection to the vehicles.
The eastern Germans were free of manorial services until the late thirteenth century.
Several eastern Germans joined the unified national team, he said, but "the pressure was so bad, they couldn't stand it.
But most eastern Germans have remained at home, and many are having trouble adjusting to their new lives.
The sense among many eastern Germans of being outsiders in the west seems almost to have grown.