That is, you might be personally fine off economically, but you're seeing abandoned buildings all over the place, the trams are run down, and the schools have leaky roofs because the municipality has no money because half of the population moved west and all the infrastructure is oversized.
Same thing in the West. Infrastructure is not that far behind in the East actually, so this is a bit of a myth. Generally German infrastructure has been suffering a lot over the past couple decades, also thanks to the 16 years of the Union not wanting to spend money on anything important. But I guess voters forgot that already.