I am sitting in the basement.

Of Macy's, that is. And I am enjoying awesome Ben & Jerry ice cream.

My boyfriend just asked whether we had ice cream like that in East Germany, and in fact, for the best ice cream in East Germany, go to Burg Stargard. There is a legendary ice cream parlour that survived not only communism but also the predators that rose after its demise. However, the point here is that this particular ice cream parlour did not expand and spread its awesome recipe all over Germany as it would have deserved it in a free market society where the best idea actually has a chance to compete and win.

I did have a nice time at Macy's, and yes, it is amazing, and yet I feel somewhat sad, bordering on bitter. People deserve to enjoy their only life, and that includes buying random crap for the money they work for. Working without being able to buy what you desire is slavery. Yet that is what generations of people did under communism — work but not shop or travel.

At Ben & Jerry's, we put our heads through a cardboard logo, and a nice store assistant offered to take our pictures. I couldn't help but remember the store staff in East German stores, famous for their frustrated, hostile attitude. As a consumer, all you could do is come up with jokes.

I enjoy looking at nice design, pretty kitchenware, whatever. I don't care if this is stuff I don't need or cannot afford. Which is worse — working all your life and never being allowed to go see Paris, or living in a big, big world where you have to figure out how to handle your freedom and how to make choices?

Communism impoverishes culture and people's spirits — and much worse than capitalism that exploits it and puts silly brand names on everything. If I see something pretty that I want, and I cannot afford it — so fucking what. I can still get inspired and strive to change my life.

I just saw some pretty plates here at Macy's that may well have been created by an Eastern European designer, and I was reminded of pictures I had looked at yesterday, of people and street scenes photographed in Moscow just before communism collapsed there.

Why am I worried about communism, twenty years after its collapse, while having ice cream and coffee at Macy's?

A few weeks ago, a wonderful Jewish man I met at a party asked me what life was like under communism.

"It was a paradise," I said, " for children".

Bob's face lit up, he smiled, and told me that he had asked a Chinese woman the same question, and she had given him the same answer.

"But most of your life, you are not a child," I said.

And if you are treated like a child, and if you cannot leave your country very much the same way a prisoner is not free to leave his jail, then you will get depressed. During those 60 years, communism might at times have been more like life in a prison, at other times more like life in a zoo — the point is that it is not suitable for adult human beings.

And that is what makes my memories so bitter in hindsight. I am lucky communism ended when I was 17, even though it took me 20 years to realize how lucky I was. But now that I live in Manhattan (the heart of evil as far as our former communist leaders were concered), I am worried about communism again. There are more than enough people here who have no idea, who, unlike Bob, are not asking what it actually was like. There are more than enough people who are driven by the same brutality and idiocy of the idealists who were okay with decimating the population and terrorizing the rest into communist happiness.