History /
"Westerner's" most ridiculous beliefs about the time of communism in Poland [73]
Not Poland, but Yugoslavia 1983.
I was 19 had been living on a kibbutz in Israel, and was traveling with my Swedish friend to Sweden, we wer hitch-hiking our way there. We got to Greece, managed to struggle up to the Yugoslavic Border, and we was told not to try to hitch-hike in Yugoslavia it was hopeless, but try and get a lift right the way through to Austria/Germany. We managed to do that.
The first thing we saw when the light came up was Peasant women working in a muddy hilly field next to the "Motor-way" we wer amazed, we wer shocked I thought Peasants was something of the Past, it was something that had died out in Britain hundreds of years ago. We saw these elderly women in their head scarves working by hand on this muddy hill. We saw men walking their bulls by the side of the "Motor-way" they wer feeding their cows on the roadside weeds, the motor-way, which seemed to be made of concrete, had only two lanes.
We had the Police stopping us every few miles, the Police looked like they wer like something out of "Chips", shiny boots, sunglasses, flash motor bikes, the lot! they would radio ahead to tell the next cop, we wer coming, and each time a bribe was handed over to the cop in the Germans driver's passport. The cops looked like they wer out of "Chips", complete replica, but the roads looked like they wer made out of concrete! ?:o.
We needed to get some petrol, we looked for petrol stations, we found some, the petrol stations wer covered in beautiful flags, a beautiful display of flags outside each petrol station, I think it was
May Day or something, yet each Petrol-Station had no petrol in it, beautiful flags, but no petrol! they didn't hav staff manning them half the time, which we found out when looking a toilet.
we saw soldiers trying to hitch-hike, they looked they wer from the Second World War, I had never seen that before, not even my Grand Dad looked like that.
We finally arrived in Belgrade, the first thing we saw was a a sloping concrete wall covered in a Propaganda Muriel depicting heroic workers or something, it was just like I imagined the Soviet Union was like, but in miniature. we got something to eat, lined up in some canteen, it was bleak wet, raining, every body was shuffle-ling around, it was just how Communist countries wer depicted in Western films. Every where we went we saw unfinished buildings, homes, we wer told if the buildings wer unfinished that the owners didn't hav to pay Tax on them, so they didn't finish the top floor.
Well, finally we got to the Austrian border, the alphabet had changed when they stamped our Passports, and we wer back in the ...? eh,?Our World, /,the modern World, anyway it was familiar.
I imagin that has all changed now, things hav improved vastly now that Communism is Dead, that was 45-72 Years wasted!. It was one of the happiest days in my life when the Berlin Wall fell.
