Finally, we needed to stock up on maps and guidebooks, especially since I suspected that some of them might be hard to find in Eastern Europe, particularly city maps for East German cities. I bought a bunch, and dug some others out of my files (from my previous trip to Hungary and Yugoslavia). A Prague guidebook was hard to find, but I was able to borrow one from my manager, Liba, who was a US citizen of Czech birth, who herself was considering going back to Czechoslovakia around Christmas.
People asked me what I was doing for transportation. I told them I was going to drive, which raised some eyebrows. I own a Mazda RX-7, which I had taken to Europe with me. It was unlikely that mechanics in the East had seen a rotary engine, much less knew how to repair one. However, the car was in good condition and had just been checked out. It was a calculated risk, but I felt it was reasonable. I wanted the freedom to make my own schedules and not depend on the schedules of the Eastern European railroads, and I wanted to be able to drive through the countryside and stop in small towns. All of this required a car. Still, some people commented on my 'bravery' (a synonym for foolishness?). In any case, nothing happened.
One thing I was worried about, though, was the availability of unleaded gasoline. There were times that I had trouble finding it in France and Italy, and I knew it would be much harder to find it in the East. On a previous trip to Yugoslavia, I had to drive ten miles out of my way to get it. I was reassured, though, by markings on my maps indicating gas stations with unleaded gas in Leipzig and Dresden, and the Czech and Hungarian tourist offices gave me listings of all the unleaded gas stations in those countries. Plus, part way through the trip we would be stopping in Berlin and in Vienna, where unleaded was not only available, but was mandatory at all gas stations. Again, it never became a problem.
About a week before departure our hotel reservations and East German visas arrived. We had reservations for all the places we wanted to visit; Mr. Saner had come through (of which I had never had any doubt). I bought some new walking shoes and did some last-minute packing, and finally the morning of December 23 arrived. It was time to go.
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December 28, 1989 - Berlin/Dresden
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Not much to say about this day. We wake up and go to meet Monika at the subway station near the hotel. She's a bit late; she had to wait a half-hour to cross the border. It's ok - Mark's late trying to buy a gift. She brings us a gift for Willibald, and some more literature. We haven't planned anything, but she wants to spend more time with us, so we take a walk over to the Ku-Damm, then go to the Martin-Gropius-Bau to see an exhibit of demonstration pictures. We're all amazed by the ornate interior of the museum.
Even though Mark doesn't think we showed her a very good time, I think she enjoyed just walking around with us in the west. She says that if someone had told her three months ago what things would be like now, she wouldn't have believed it: 'Wahnsinn!' ('Nonsense! Madness!') I hear the same chorus later in Prague.
We ask if many of the people who left will come back. She says a few. Several hundred have left from her housing complex alone. One friend of hers has a sister who left. The friend says, 'I hate her.' But she [Monika] says, if the people hadn't left, would anything have changed?
We're invited back any time, and even to stay with them instead of in a hotel. It's a wonderful offer and we reciprocate. Will we ever take them up on it?
We walk alongside the Wall toward Checkpoint Charlie. Everywhere are people with hammers. Monika looks at it with a big smile. 'Wahnsinn!'
We get out of Berlin fairly late. One try at a wrong crossing point (the one closest to the road to Dresden) wastes some time, and we finally get over the border around 5. The roads are crowded and we get into Dresden around 8. We only get a glimpse of the magnificence of the Baroque palaces through the nighttime fog. The first person we encounter is the parking lot attendant, who offers to change money for us. Probably a good job - he's the first person whom foreigners often encounter. The hotel room is small. We take a quick walk around the town - many of the palaces are still in ruins (as are a few buildings we saw in East Berlin), others are restored, or in the process of being restored. We walk through the courtyard of the Zwinger (amazingly, the grounds of the palace are open - there's no indication they're ever closed), but don't get to meet Matthias' friends. My Falk map of Dresden, purchased in Zurich, gets a woman's attention. She wants to know if she can buy one here, but I can't help her. A call to Prague causes us to move up next day's meeting time to 11 AM. We go to sleep in anticipation of an early start tomorrow.
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December 29, 1989 - Dresden/Prague
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Another big day. We get up at 6, pack, eat breakfast, and take a quick walk around the town, trying to get some pictures, but the sun isn't up yet. I wish I could come back to Dresden for a few days, maybe a weekend, but we have to leave.
East German hotel breakfasts are kind of strange. Unlike the buffets which are included in western, particularly West German, hotels, in East German hotels they give you a voucher for, say, 8 Ost-Marks. You go up and get what you want (bread that's not too fresh, lots of strange new sausages, bad coffee), and a cashier gives you a slip recording the prices of the things you've bought. Generally, you don't know the prices of the things you've bought beforehand, usually you go over and have to pay cash, and the eight marks usually don't allow you to sample the more interesting things on the table - a strange system.
The previous day the East German border guard misunderstood me and gave me a transit visa. Fortunately, we didn't have any problem; the desk clerk asked us if we were leaving East Germany before 5 PM the next day (we were), so it was no problem staying the night.
Out of town and on the road. Past a bunch of gas stations, all of them with long lines of Trabis. I'm in a hurry and don't stop. I hope I don't regret it. Through some prosperous-looking small towns and into a hilly region known as Saechsische Schweiz (Saxon Switzerland). It looks a bit Swiss. There's a lot of frost at the top where the border is. Formalities are fairly quick - the Czechs make us change 180 DM, which we probably don't have to do, since we've paid for our hotel in hard currency in advance. There's a cursory, but friendly, customs check.
The language is suddenly different. The signs are different. The architecture is initially similar, but the feel of the villages gradually changes. Is it the different language that makes me feel this way? All the Czech flags? [Note to any Slovak readers out there: I used the adjective Czech to describe Czechoslovakia in my diary; I realize it's not accurate. I also used the term Czechoslovakia, rather than Czech-Slovak Federated Republic or CSFR, since that's what it was called at the time. No offense intended.] The landscape becomes flat. Without getting lost (a minor miracle), we get to Prague about 15 minutes late and find our hotel. We park the car in the hotel lot and the attendant asks if we want to change money. Jan, a mathematician about 40, balding and with a beard, is waiting for us. He's in a hurry to meet a friend, then get to the castle for Havel's inaugural Mass, so we get a whirlwind tour across Prague. He points out his childhood neighborhood and school, asks after his friend Jan in Zurich and what he thinks (his own feeling is cautious optimism). He tells us the papers are more open in their reporting than before, although reporting on Panama is a bit confused. The papers sense that the people aren't in the mood to hear much criticism of the US, and there's no party line to follow. He gladly takes our copies of the International Herald Tribune and Der Spiegel.
There are Havel portraits and Civic Forum posters all over the place, in train stations, in shop windows, in the windows of taxis and trams. Czech flags are flying everywhere. This isn't ordinary. Jan later tells us that people have been getting drunk and becoming patriotic, which is unusual.
We get to the pub where we're supposed to meet the friend, but she's not there; she must have already left. We soon find her, though, or she finds us. Liba is a pretty young woman of about 30, the cousin of a friend of Jan's. She lives in London and works as a buyer for a British hotel chain. She says she buys everything you could think of. Jan is a researcher in the mathematics department of the university. He later tells us he doesn't have the highest degree, although he's done the work, because he isn't (or wasn't) considered politically reliable. He figures he'll get the degree now, although it won't make much difference except perhaps a slightly higher salary. He already travels quite a bit, although that might become easier, too.
We approach the castle. Crowds are already converging on it. Groups of soldiers, buses, members of sports clubs in matching jackets, people with Czech and European flags. Two soldiers are carrying a banner praising Havel. An announcement from a loudspeaker asks for calm - they don't want any more injuries. I guess someone was hurt in the crush. Two soldiers are standing guard at the gate. They're completely dwarfed by the crowd and I think they look nervous. We walk through the gate and get swept in with the crowd through an archway into a courtyard. We stop here for a while because we hear a cheer over the loudspeaker. In the next courtyard, Havel has come out on the balcony and is making a speech. It's a very short speech and sounds kind of awkward (although the translated version in the paper I saw later was very moving). The people don't mind the deficiencies in the speech at all and start shouting his name. We surge forward, get swept in the second courtyard, and find ourselves in front of the cathedral. No chance we'll get in. We get separated from Mark, although we find him later. We listen to the Mass, talk to a friend of Jan's, a young guy in a black hat who offers us a swig of Romanian champagne (he apologizes for the choice, but there's no Czech champagne left in the shops). We learn later that he used to be a teacher of handicapped children, but that he's now an actor. He has a pessimistic outlook on the future of actors in Czechoslovakia.
I asked Jan if he could take time off because it was vacation at the university. He said yes, but added with a laugh that the students were on strike anyway.
The mass ends, and the people start filing out, but we wait around a little. There's a commotion on one side of the courtyard. I go over to see what's going on. Apparently members of the cabinet are going out. People cheer and applaud. The only one I recognize is the bearded Komarek, one of the new deputy prime ministers.
We head out (having found Mark), go down the castle hill and past the Romanian embassy, where the streets are lined with protest signs and memorial candles. Ceaucescu is already dead. We hear that Havel cancelled his reception and donated the money, about 300,000 crowns, to Romanian relief.
We go through Prague's maze-like streets, looking for a place to eat, but in the holiday atmosphere everyone has the same idea. We finally find a place where we have beer and the one dish on the menu. |
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