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I regret that there were all those restrictions concerning traveling because my husband and I loved to travel, and if it hadn’t been for the regime, we would have seen much more of the world than we actually did. But in those circumstances, we saw all of the socialist camp. I remember, when there was this big fuss with Czechoslovakia [during the Prague Spring] [13], we were at the Czech border! We were on a trip in our car – my husband, my son and I – to see Hungary and Czechoslovakia. That was allowed. We visited Hungary, and then we headed for Czechoslovakia, but it was getting dark, so my husband and I decided to pitch our tent for the night and sleep before we would enter Czechoslovakia. We traveled with a tent, and near the road there was the skirt of a forest, where a lot of other people camped: there were Polish tents, Czech tents, and so on, and we thought of camping there, too, so that we wouldn’t be alone, and cross the border with Czechoslovakia in the morning.
We set up the tent and went to bed, and after a while, we heard some sort of rattling, and the tent turned all orange: there was light coming through its cloth like it does when the sun is shining through. My husband opened the tent, looked out, and said, ‘There’s an army! Tanks! Russian tanks!’ This was happening during the night, and I was afraid that my son would get scared, and I kept whispering to my husband, ‘Don’t stick your head outside! Don’t look!’ When it finally dawned, heads started to appear, carefully, from all the tents! And then we turned on the radio and we found out from [Radio] Free Europe that the Russian armies had entered Czechoslovakia. What to do next? The Czechs said they were going home, but they didn’t let anybody cross the border, not even the Czechs. Finally, everybody headed back to Hungary, only we stayed behind, at the side of the road, alone, near a forest!
My husband said, ‘This cannot last long, we are still going to visit Czechoslovakia!’ Everybody left – they were scared – whereas we started cooking breakfast, with a small cooker we had with us, and then we thought of what to do. Clearly the only option was to go back to Hungary. My husband still wanted to go to Czechoslovakia, but I was afraid that we would end up shot, so I said, ‘The hell with it, we will go when all this is over!’ So we went back to Hungary. When we approached the Hungarian border, we heard the words: ‘Ki jon ott?’, ‘Who is coming?’ You can surely imagine: we were calmly driving to Hungary from Czechoslovakia, and they knew that the border was closed. Who knows what they were thinking! Our luck was that I could speak Hungarian, so I explained the situation to them. Then the frontier guard asked me, ‘Do you speak German?’ ‘I do’, I answered. ‘Then please explain to these people that they cannot pass’, he burst out. There was a party from the GDR [German Democratic Republic], who wanted to pass through Czechoslovakia, then to Austria and flee. I told them that they had bad luck, and that what they had planned wasn’t going to happen.
The Hungarian authorities set up some sort of camping for the unexpected Polish, German visitors, where they could stay until this mess with Czechoslovakia was over. All the others had gratuities, but the Romanians had to pay for their stay there; I don’t know why. So we stayed in Budapest, in a camp near the Roman baths, Romai Furdo; we had Czech money with us, but nobody wanted to exchange that. Luckily, my husband had stashed away some Romanian lei, and they accepted those, and that’s how we paid for the camping. We weren’t allowed to take Romanian money out of the country, or just a small standard sum, I think, but as you can see, taking more with us proved to be very useful. I wanted to go home immediately, but my husband hoped it would all be over in a couple of days. It wasn’t, our money ran out, so we eventually went back home and gave the Czech crowns back to ONT [‘Oficiul National de Turism’ in Romanian, the National Tourism Office, the only travel agency in Romania during communism], and that was the end of our trip. We visited Czechoslovakia after all, but in another year.
We set up the tent and went to bed, and after a while, we heard some sort of rattling, and the tent turned all orange: there was light coming through its cloth like it does when the sun is shining through. My husband opened the tent, looked out, and said, ‘There’s an army! Tanks! Russian tanks!’ This was happening during the night, and I was afraid that my son would get scared, and I kept whispering to my husband, ‘Don’t stick your head outside! Don’t look!’ When it finally dawned, heads started to appear, carefully, from all the tents! And then we turned on the radio and we found out from [Radio] Free Europe that the Russian armies had entered Czechoslovakia. What to do next? The Czechs said they were going home, but they didn’t let anybody cross the border, not even the Czechs. Finally, everybody headed back to Hungary, only we stayed behind, at the side of the road, alone, near a forest!
My husband said, ‘This cannot last long, we are still going to visit Czechoslovakia!’ Everybody left – they were scared – whereas we started cooking breakfast, with a small cooker we had with us, and then we thought of what to do. Clearly the only option was to go back to Hungary. My husband still wanted to go to Czechoslovakia, but I was afraid that we would end up shot, so I said, ‘The hell with it, we will go when all this is over!’ So we went back to Hungary. When we approached the Hungarian border, we heard the words: ‘Ki jon ott?’, ‘Who is coming?’ You can surely imagine: we were calmly driving to Hungary from Czechoslovakia, and they knew that the border was closed. Who knows what they were thinking! Our luck was that I could speak Hungarian, so I explained the situation to them. Then the frontier guard asked me, ‘Do you speak German?’ ‘I do’, I answered. ‘Then please explain to these people that they cannot pass’, he burst out. There was a party from the GDR [German Democratic Republic], who wanted to pass through Czechoslovakia, then to Austria and flee. I told them that they had bad luck, and that what they had planned wasn’t going to happen.
The Hungarian authorities set up some sort of camping for the unexpected Polish, German visitors, where they could stay until this mess with Czechoslovakia was over. All the others had gratuities, but the Romanians had to pay for their stay there; I don’t know why. So we stayed in Budapest, in a camp near the Roman baths, Romai Furdo; we had Czech money with us, but nobody wanted to exchange that. Luckily, my husband had stashed away some Romanian lei, and they accepted those, and that’s how we paid for the camping. We weren’t allowed to take Romanian money out of the country, or just a small standard sum, I think, but as you can see, taking more with us proved to be very useful. I wanted to go home immediately, but my husband hoped it would all be over in a couple of days. It wasn’t, our money ran out, so we eventually went back home and gave the Czech crowns back to ONT [‘Oficiul National de Turism’ in Romanian, the National Tourism Office, the only travel agency in Romania during communism], and that was the end of our trip. We visited Czechoslovakia after all, but in another year.
Period
Location
Romania
Interview
Eva Gora Moldovan