This Europe: Etiquette for visitors to ex-Communist guesthouse: Don't mention the Wall

The Berlin Wall is not a favourite topic of conversation among the comrades and other guests holidaying at the Am Wald hotel in Thuringia, east Germany, this summer.

The 40-room hotel is the only one in Germany owned by the successors to the East German Communist Party. Criticism of what Marxist-Leninist jargon once referred to as Berlin's "anti-fascist protection barrier" is not always appreciated. "It does not help the process of German reunification to be constantly reminded of this fact," said one of Am Wald's guests, a retired east German teacher and supporter of the 88,000-member reform-communist Party for Democratic Socialism (PDS) when the dreaded Berlin Wall cropped up .

Like scores of other party sympathisers, he had chosen to stay at Am Wald because of its Communist-friendly ambience. "One's holiday is more harmonious and balanced if one is able to be in the company of those who see things from an objective viewpoint," he said.

Perched on a thickly wooded hillside above the town of Elgersburg in the Thuringian Forest, the recently renovated Am Wald is just the place to wind down from the effects of a gruelling politburo session. The hotel offers guests miles of hill walking, a sauna, bowling alley and an unashamedly bourgeois restaurant that serves regional specialities including the ubiquitous Thuringian sausage.

Peter Zoerner, who manages Am Wald on behalf of the PDS, said: "We run the hotel purely as a business and everyone is welcome."

Comrades are given preferential treatment at Am Wald: the hotel's selection of daily newspapers consists mainly of the party organ Neues Deutschland. Non-comrades with religious leanings will search Am Wald's bedside drawers in vain – the Bible, Gideon's or otherwise, is not provided.

Unlike other former Communist Party properties that were handed to the government of reunited Germany after 1990, Am Wald was returned to the PDS in 1995. The party was entitled to reclaim the premises because it was bought by the Communist Party in 1924, long before the division of post-war Germany. It was used as a home for the children of murdered or imprisoned party activists and then a hotel for party workers. The hotel's history is documented in a museum in a wooden outhouse and the visitors' book provides an insight into the kind of people Am Wald attracts. "Long Live Germany, Socialism and Communism," wrote Qiua Ziadong of the Central China School of Political Science during a visit last year. But the bulk of the visitors are Communists who feel betrayed by more than a decade of unification. "This museum is especially important today when attempts are being made to ignore the struggles of the workers' movement and falsify history," wrote Gerd Eberhard from Mecklenburg.

He would have found some solace in Am Wald's library. Its book shelves are full of works by socialist authors. A slim volume entitled The Everyday Life of the Border Guard provides accounts by East German soldiers, but does not dwell on the more than 200 East Germans shot while trying to escape to the West.