Things we believed during the Cold War that ended up being wrong

Soviet countries were gray, grim places with gray, grim-faced people
The words "former Soviet state" are the best way to instill instant foreboding about any vacation. You've doubtless got a mental image of Communist countries, and it doubtless involves gray-faced people shuffling around gray cities in gray weather, while wearing clothes that match the gray, gray skies above. As travel guides will tell you, the reputation of ex-Socialist states like Poland can even now be summed up with the single word "grim."

While decaying tower blocks filled with impoverished people definitely exist in Eastern Europe, they also exist in Chicago, Detroit, and, like, all the other cities. Away from the urban decay, places like Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic, and Hungary are now and have always been beautiful.

After decades of propaganda promising that life under Communism was relentlessly ugly, the reality of cities like Budapest or Krakow can still be jarring. Prague, for example, is today so renowned that a recent poll of travelers ranked it prettier than Venice. The Polish port city of Gdansk used to have a reputation in the West befitting a place with "dank" in its name. Then Poland opened up, and we got to see Gdansk (pictured above) as it really was. Today, travel sites have whole lists of gorgeous buildings in this former Communist port, each one prettier than anything the entire state of Nebraska could summon. And we haven't even touched on places like Ukraine's Carpathian landscapes or the unlikely beauty of rural Albania. (Not sarcasm!) Consider your next vacation planned.