I was fortunate enough to be in Hungary in the late 1990s, when they began redoing Budapest and the smaller city that I lived in. You could see the optimism growing within the people and the beauty of the city being restored in parallel. Last time I was there, there was still a massive amount of old shitty buildings, but from my first visit until my last there was tremendous improvement.

I took a drive to Prague during that time. I noticed the typical Soviet style concrete behemoth of depressing apartment buildings as I was a few miles outside the city. Then you get to the real city center and it is just beautiful.