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Hungary | Czechoslovakia |
Poland
HUNGARY
I had never been to Eastern Europe before the
autumn of 1989. I was in Austria when I heard that the Hungarian government had declared
itself to be no longer a People's Republic. I had come into contact with a number of
Soviets for the first time, and wanted to continue on to the Soviet Union. The green,
peace group I had been working with since finishing college had no solid contacts there;
and, I felt the need to help gather the "lost tribes" of the New Age in the
East. I spent six weeks in Eastern Europe during November and December that year.
I got a visa from the Hungarian Embassy in Vienna on October 30. Ride sharing was much
cheaper than the train, and the hydrofoil down the Danube only ran in summer; but as it
turned out, hitchhiking would have been a straight shot. I arranged with the
Mitfahrzentrale to share a ride to Budapest on November 1.
The Hungarian border was like a beach with waves of people washing up on it. The once
fearsome guardhouses, like squat fire towers along the border were now empty. There were
still Red Cross workers there trying to facilitate traffic coming from the East, primarily
from East Germany. By then, more than 50,000 East Germans had crossed the Hungarian border
with Austria. The authorities were obviously unprepared for the increase in both foot and
car traffic.
The car I was in arrived in Budapest at rush hour, as the sun was setting. We drove around
in circles for about an hour before we got oriented and found a place to park. At this
time Budapest was packed with every kind of adventurer and hedonist. It was also some sort
of Austrian holiday. The central office for hotel reservations was jammed, every room in
town was full.
The first clerk I approached asked me where I was from before giving me an answer to how
much the "last room in town" would cost. When he said more than twenty dollars
US, I told him "Forget it; I'll sit right here until you find me a more reasonable
one." But the woman I came with found rooms for a little more than five dollars from
the another clerk down the row. I soon found myself in the spare bedroom of a modern
high-rise apartment, with five Australian women in the next room. I spent three weeks in
Budapest trying unsuccessfully to get a Soviet visa.
One of the first things I noticed about the East was that people wait for the lights to
change before walking, more than they do in the West. Throughout the city, there were
flowers and candles on certain monuments, prayer vigils, and flags with the party emblem
cut out. On the November 4 anniversary of the crushing of the 1956 uprising against the
Soviet invasion, I was walking down the street when I heard over a radio, blaring from a
newsstand kiosk, John Lennon singing "all we are saying is give peace a chance."
From that day for the rest of my stay in Budapest, whenever I saw a Soviet soldier in the
street or subway I would stop and give him a sticker of the whole Earth.
My only contact in Budapest, in fact in all of Hungary, was the European Youth Forest
Action coordinator there, who was planning their "Ecotopia" encampment for
August 1990. When I called her, she seemed skeptical of an anonymous American inquiring
about the ecology movement and put off our meeting for a week. Fortunately, in Vienna I
had found a new alternative guidebook to Hungary, in German, which had a superb directory
section in back, listing local contacts for various progressive activities. After a few
phone calls, I got an appointment with a prominent ecological journalist, who graciously
gave me an extensive overview of the ecological scene in Hungary, both of what problems
existed and who was working on them, as well as more contacts. I eventually met with
representatives of the Hungarian underground, called the "Blues," the unofficial
anarchist club of the university, the peace movement "460," and the Green Party
of Hungary.
I was invited by ecological activist Gabor Hrasko, then editor of GREENWAY, and peace
activist Pal Kocsis, editor of SURVIVAL/460, to be an international observer at the
foundation congress of the Green Party of Hungary on the weekend of November 18-19. After
witnessing these awkward first steps of democracy, the obviously inexperienced voting at
the Greens congress, and daily take overs of the centralized industries by multinational
corporations, it seemed to me that communism was as dead in Hungary as the Raj in India.
The previous day, November 17, students in Prague commiserating Nazi fascism had been
fatally beaten by police. I was lucky enough to meet
Juraj Mesik from Czechoslovakia at
the congress. He invited me to come visit him and his friends at the Slovak Union of
Nature and Landscape Conservationists in Bratislava. I jumped at the opportunity, and had
little difficulty getting a visa the next day.
I left Budapest November 23 from Nyugati pu. station on the Hungaria Express, which had
come from Bucharest and was bound for Prague and East Berlin. I found it interesting that
people in the East say only Berlin and West Berlin, rather than Berlin and East Berlin as
we do. The opening of the Berlin Wall on November 9, had come as a gigantic surprise to
everyone. Until then the East German refugee problem had been immense for Hungary. I
recalled how I had cried when I heard that night on my pocket short-wave radio that it had
been breached and again the next morning when I read the details in Budapest's English
language daily. The mood was somber as the train pulled out of town. Passport control,
wearing military uniforms, barely checked my visa and ignored currency exchange receipts.
 CZECHOSLOVAKIA
My welcome to Slovakia was a hint of blowing snow. In Bratislava, the capital of the
Slovak Republic, people in the streets were silent and solemn, almost fearful. The
previous day had seen the first major "manifestation" (demonstration) there
since 1968. Uncertain, some would furtively stop to read the communiqués posted on street
corners and shop windows.
The communiqués were computer printed on terminals commandeered by striking university
students and were transported throughout the country by student couriers via train and bus
and then distributed and posted locally by striking high school students, often girls.
They were posted daily, or sometimes hourly. The communiqués originated from the Laterna
Magica, actors striking in support of the students, who had gone on strike in response to
the police brutality against students on November 17. The actors occupied the national
theaters and opened them to the public to create the Obcanske Forum, the people's forum or
as it became known... the Civic Forum.
During the time of my visit to Slovakia and Bohemia, from November 23 until December 1,
the ecological movement was not only indistinguishable from the opposition but was in fact
orchestrating it. This Velvet Revolution was begun by children striking in reaction to
police brutality against fellow students, ironically, commemorating Nazi brutality against
students. In Bratislava, the Town Department of the Slovak Union of Nature and Landscape
Conservators was working together with the student strike committee of the university and
the civic forum, known in Slovakia as People Against Violence (VPN), at the national
theater to lead the "manifestations" there. All three groups were in
communication with their counterparts in Prague, but primarily the Civic Forum meeting at
the Magic Lantern theater.
After arriving in Bratislava, I was surprised to find absolutely no tourist information at
the station, nor currency exchange. Having no Czechoslovak Crowns, I set out on foot into
the city and eventually located the Cedok tourist office for foreigners. The place was
virtually desolate and the staff could not have been more indifferent or surly without
being hostile.
After changing the required amount of money and being duped into buying an outrageously
expensive, ridiculously inadequate map. I checked into a second class hotel down the
street. I was asked by the desk clerk and by the maitre d' to change money illegally, at
twice the legal rate, but which I later discovered was half the usual black market rate.
Later, after retrieving my backpack from the station, the only taxicab there refused to
take anyone anywhere; but, a very timid, almost frightened man, as it turned out an
electrical engineer, in a private car, silently offered with elaborate gestures to take me
to my hotel for a dollar.
I called the Town Department of SZOPK and spoke with Peter Tatar, who apologized for being
caught up in trying to change the government and invited me to witness "some
political entertainment." That evening I found myself in an area cordoned off by
Slovak partisans at the center of a crowd of hundreds of thousands, face to face with
Alexander Dubcek. As the multitudes began to chant over and over, louder and louder
"DUBCEK... DUBCEK...", Peter leaned over and blithely stated, "you know,
this man Dubcek really is quite popular." There is something intense, deeply moving,
when the heart of a nation is stirred. The ecstasy becomes so great, there's nothing more
to say. I will never forget as hundreds of thousands pulled out their key rings and
without a word began to rattle them. The wind was blowing cold but the people radiated
warmth.
After the third consecutive evening of massive demonstrations in Bratislava, I traveled by
train to the hill town of Banska Bystrica, near the High Tatra mountains, where I had been
invited to lie low with Juraj and his family. Unfortunately, the vagaries of revolution
had called him away the night I arrived. One of the kindest old men I have ever met was a
conductor on my train and begged me to stay in the station that night, and not to go out
in the streets. However, headstrong with American confidence, I trudged through the empty
streets to the only luxury hotel and checked-in. Only to realize that I had left the hands
of the people and was once again in the hands of the communists, and this time without a
proper visa. Careful not to phone from the hotel, I called my friends to tell them where I
was.
The next sunny morning, Juraj's lovely wife, Margareta, came trudging up to the hotel
through the snowy streets with a bouncing baby carriage to tell me he would be back that
evening and invited me to come with her to the Catholic church to hear a communiqué from
the Archbishop and then go to the demonstration.
At that time, all forms of domestic mass communication were controlled by the state, and
did not report events accurately. However, international telephone lines were open; Slovak
partisans would telephone the world press, notably the BBC, who would beam the reports
back in. I remember sitting around the table with my friends sipping hot cocoa, when the
announcement came that the staff of the state television had independently made the
decision to report on the events as they actually occurred. I saw as the family's mouths
dropped open in astonishment as we saw scene after scene of demonstrations in Prague,
which I believe at that point had been moved from Wenclas square to a larger one. My
friends commented on the obvious power of television, when the effect on their town became
apparent.
Before the TV had started reporting truthfully, local demonstrations had been meager.
There was much more fear in small towns than in bigger cities. They all remembered how the
children of those who participated in the 1968 uprising were denied college educations.
Following the televised reports, opposition increased steadily. It was almost as if the
small town people did not know how to protest; they faithfully aped on a smaller scale
what they had seen on TV. Two days later, it was here in Banska Bystrica that I
participated in the first nationwide general strike, from 12:00 to 14:00. Margareta, who
was trained as a medical doctor, was cute when she said excitedly that she was so
disappointed that this was her first general strike and she was unemployed; so, she
decided to leave her two children with her mother and not watch them for the two hours.
I soon got word that a manifesto had been issued in Prague by five signatories proclaiming
the formation of the Czech Green Party. I left Bratislava by train for Prague, on November
28. I arrived that evening at Praha stred station and immediately called the EYFA contact
there, who generously found me a place to stay. The next morning I located the makeshift
offices, which were technically illegal, and had lunch with several of the signatories. I
was surprised to find they had no contacts with greens abroad. The whole day people
streamed in and out, registering with the fledgling party. Most, but not all, were
interested in the party program of which there was a conspicuous absence. I was there at
17:00 for the beginning of their first public meeting, but left for the third meeting of
the so-called non-political Green Circle of Prague, at 18:00. It was held in the basement
of a theater, and most of the people there were eco-dissidents, who spent the most of the
evening infighting between the legal (established) and the illegal (underground) groups.
 Convinced
that the majority of drama was over, I chose to leave the country just before my ten day
visa expired. Buying an international ticket was frustrating. I got passed around a loop
of half a dozen bureaucrats about three times, and was told completely opposite things. On
December 1, I left Praha Hl. n. station for Krakow, Poland. Entering the country had been
so easy, I was unprepared for what took place at the border. Just like quintessential
fascists, when the border guards saw that I hadn't stayed more than a few nights at
hotels, they demanded the names of the people I had stayed with. Of course, I refused;
they reacted by searching my pack for addresses, which they did not find! But they did
discover the plethora of printed matter that I had collected from organizations that had
been illegal only two days before for the Green Committees of Correspondence in Kansas
City, Missouri. When they became excited, I began to worry. Fortunately, the young Polish
border guards intervened by grabbing my passport and stamping me into Poland before the
Czechs could figure out that my "Sperm Bank" and "Ecumenical Express"
credit cards were gags. I praised George Bush all the way to Krakow for giving Lech Walesa
that medal a day or two before.
POLAND
I arrived in Krakow in the middle of a Friday night, and went to the central
reservations office in the hotel Warszawski, where I was told that there were absolutely
no rooms available in Krakow and that the only place where I could change money officially
was in the luxury hotel on the other side of town. So, I walked under full pack through
the snowy night across town. When I arrived, I was told that there were plenty of rooms
available. Nearly all of the people I came into contact with there who regularly deal with
tourists tried to rip me off by padding my bills or short changing me. But in fairness,
Poland was as close to the Great Depression as I ever hope to come. Beets, turnips, or
cabbage three times a day is not my idea of cuisine. In the following days, I made contact
with the Polish Ecological Club and the Green Federation.
I left Krakow by train for Warsaw at dawn on December 5, travelling with representatives
of the Green Federation and the Freedom and Peace group, WIP. In Warsaw, we went to the
Polish parliament, called the Sejm, to picket the Solidarity debate on nuclear power. A
delegation from the protest, which I accompanied, was eventually invited inside to monitor
the voting. There were lots of faded blue jeans and shaggy mustaches in evidence. The
preliminary vote was only marginally in our favor. The next day I went to buy a plane
ticket home. I tried unsuccessfully to get my visa extended.
On Thursday, I tried again early to get my visa renewed, but had to leave for Lublin by
train before it was completed. Piotr Glinski, a sociologist with the Polish Academy of
Sciences studying environmentalism in Poland, invited me to join him and the deputy
minister of culture, who was with Solidarity, to visit the modern theater collective of
Gardzienice, whose subsidy was being cut, for a performance and banquet, sort of a last
supper. Touring their rural site on icy roads was treacherous for my roping boots . Later
that evening, they dropped me off in Lublin on the way back to Warsaw. I tried
unsuccessfully to locate some contacts there, then tried to get a hotel room, but was
stymied by the fact that my passport was still with the police in Warsaw. I eventually
made contact with someone, a friend of a friend, who took me to stay with his buddies.
They were all young students in the middle of a vodka party in celebration of one of them
soon to become a father.
The following day, a young couple led me on an expedition into the countryside to visit a
nearby ecological village. I was astounded to find a full blown tipi on the land. And not
only that, but there were also dreadlocked African drum makers in residence. It was 100
kilometers from the Soviet border, three hundred from Chernobyl. I knew then I had
accomplished my task of locating the lost tribes. After an emotional goodbye from my
friends, I traveled by train from Lublin back to Warsaw on December 11. The next morning I
got up early and caught a LOT flight to New York. But before landing, I was making plans
for my return visit to the greens of Eastern Europe the following spring... with a bicycle
and solar-powered, fax-compatible laptop computer.
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