After all this minor chit chat and theoretical discussion, it's perhaps time to have a little action. This entry actually doesn't have anything to do with the really big problems I later faced, but it was certainly a good training ground for later experiences.
The background I'm going to give you first off, was unknown to us going through what we did until later, some parts took months to piece together. I was with an American group December 1981 in Moscow, and a friend, who also happened to be an assistant leader of the group, and I were going to leave the country separately and take a couple extra weeks to return to the States, eventually flying out of London. We didn't intend to stay in the USSR though. We were traveling by train to London, and my friend wanted to leave the USSR via Romania because she wanted to see Bucharest. We were hoping to spend Christmas outside Rome with some acquaintances we had, but something happened with the mail and we hadn't heard back, so that was uncertain. Our separate flights out of London were in the beginning of January 1982.
We didn't know though that while we were in the USSR martial law had been declared in Poland. We knew of the ongoing unrest there with Solidarity, of course, and had very explicitly asked not to be routed through Poland. We were supposed to pick up our train ticket out of the USSR in Moscow, so we didn't know until much later (or it didn't sink in) that they had actually booked us through Poland.
I tended to write my journal in incomplete sentences, but I'll clarify in brackets where it seems particularly unclear. Here is a quote from my journal entry of that trip:
17 Dec. '81, Thurs.
7:30 [a.m.] leave for airport rest of group (me back to bed)
plane leaves 20 hours late - Lufthansa (switch from Aeroflot)
[Later my dad told me that the airline switch and the fact that they were served German food on the plane indicates that the planes were flown in just to bring people out of Moscow].
K. [my friend] & I still have no train tickets
- she calls me to tell me we might be able to leave the 20th
- a woman from Sputnik takes me to their head office via bus to buy tickets [these bus rides alone were surreal. Picture this: me, a bus drive and the tour guide alone in a huge luxury bus.]
-wait in hotel room - others still haven't left
18 Dec. 81, Fri.
- about to leave room when woman from Sputnik calls to say I need to pay for hotel. I wait for her and then we go back downtown to Sputnik's central office. Back to hotel where K. is sleeping
[Every day of our extended time in Moscow was interrupted by demands for us to pay for, pick up or arrange something or the other related to our stay or trip out. Also, K. had just returned from the airport where she was seeing the group off as the last of her responsibilities with them.]
19 Dec. 81, Sat.
Sleep in late. Wait for Marina [a local official] to bring us our passports & visas. She's sick - bad cold.
We leave hotel about 1 p.m. Tried to find food Beriozka [Beriozkas were the hard currency stores, and some of them specialized in food items. Our hotel was] Too far out in boonies. Then shop at Gastronom [grocery store] - I'm sick of junk food - starving & have headache. [We hadn't paid for meals for the extra days at the hotel because the food there was so bad. We had trouble finding other food though.]
Return individually to hotel. Early to bed.
20 Dec. 1981
Sleep in. Went to bakery, bought juice and nuts at berezka. Our taxi left at 3 pm for Kievskii station. Train left 4:40.
21 Dec. 1981
After passing Kiev in early morning K. noticed notice [i.e., sign/poster in the train hallway] of our route. We'd be going through Chop, not a Romanian border crossing. Had no Hungarian visa.
That evening we had to get off the train at the border after a thorough checking. We [K. and I only] were driven to a customs building-border offices to get transit visas. We left there about midnight. Were driven a short distance on to a bridge, stopped half-way and were met by Hungarian border patrol on foot. We carried our luggage across the border/bridge to Hungarian border control building. They were very friendly to us. We walked 1 km. to train station. 2 hour difference from Moscow. Had to wait about 2-2 1/2 hours. Went to Budapest. We were there a few hours - had to change train stations. Bought records. We took 1:05 pm train to Zagreb. Arrived at 8 p.m.
I'm going to stop there. We were really wiped out at that point and ended out spending Christmas in Pula, on the Adriatic (now in Slovenia).
In Kiev the Soviets wanted to separate K. and I so that one would stay and take care of the necessary visas and the other would continue on to the border, and wait for the other of us to come with the visas. K. vehemently declined to let them separate us - she knew how to work with them better than I did. They kept saying the Hungarians wouldn't give us visas and asking why we would come without visas. This kind of talk continued at the border house.
The exchange at the border between the USSR and Hungary though was completely surreal. We were out in the middle of nowhere with only trees around in either direction and a small ravine-like ditch between the two countries. The border patrol on both sides were armed and you'd think it was an exchange of spies or something. In Hungary they were very apologetic for us being inconvenienced and they gave us a bit to eat and drink too. It was like night and day the difference between the two sides of the border.
Also, in our Soviet train there were three berths in our cabin and the third one was taken, at least part of the way, by a kind lady that we got to know a bit.
So this was sort of my first introduction to that part of the world. Of course, I didn't tell you about what we did (before the trouble leaving the country, I mean) while we were there, such as going to Zagorsk, going to the Bolshoi ballet, visiting Lenin's tomb, going to a public sauna, or meeting up with the Siberian Seven [Pentecostals from Siberia who fled to the U.S. embassy trying to emigrate; see this Time article about them: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,925232,00.html] in the U.S. Embassy. Some of these things were done in free time, not as part of the group activities.
K. and I only found out about martial law in Poland when we were able to contact our families in the USA, who told us. Things were pretty free in Yugoslavia and Hungary but information was evidently controlled, at least in this case.
At this point I don't think I was having any fall-out from my Dad's work, though. It wasn't too long though that that started to change, although it took a while to experience some things that seemed clearer on this point. In 1981 I think our problems leaving the USSR were just because we were at the wrong place at the wrong time. But it sure makes for dramatic story telling. That scene at the border crossing is forever etched in my mind. All we lacked was some kind of spy/thriller soundtrack in the background to complete the scene.
Moral of the story: try to avoid being at the wrong place at the wrong time. And if you can't avoid it, be sure to bring lots of (healthy) nonperishable food to carry you through it.
~ Meg
