TRAVELING WITH MY PARENTS - 1968, 69, 70

1968, my first trip abroad at the age of thirteen.

Karpacz

I suppose two things happened in our family that year; my parents judged me mature enough to take me along on a trip, and they

had enough money to take both my brother and me with them on vacation abroad. The trip was partially financed by the University for which my mother was working, thus our group of fellow travelers consisted of all sorts of eggheads, non-productive freeloader professors who all worked for higher education. These individualist moochers did not even travel together they just showed up in Karpacz, one of the most popular mountain resorts of Poland at the time.



Tar Creek Waterfall



On our way, we took our time driving through the Carpathians and I went above 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) for the first time in my life. My love of nature and mountains can be traced back to the Tar Creek Waterfall. On our way we stopped at Zakopane, another beautiful resort town in Poland.

Zakopane

Years later I returned there with my brother in the winter.We bought dollars in the Hungarian black market and sold them in the Polish one. The profits were staggering, so much so that we literally did not know what to do with our money. Some of the aggressive Polish girls helped us. As we were walking in town we noticed that two girls were following us. First, we dismissed this idea as being preposterous, but after crossing twice back and forth the street with the girls still in tow, we began to believe in our good luck. We entered a church and sure enough, the girls followed us.  Little did we know then that they were on familiar territory. We knew we had to make our move now, so we tried to talk to them. The willingness was there, but the common language was not. One of the girls spoke a few words of German, which actually matched my brother’s language skills perfectly. The other spoke perfect Polish and nothing else. My famously non-existent Russian came in handy, and we all four understood each other perfectly. I don’t know how but we figured out that just barely two months earlier these girls were still members of a convent and were walking around in nun uniforms. They decided that convent life was not for them and quit being nuns. I suppose, when they met us they wanted to make up for lost time. We took them to a restaurant where we had no idea what was on the menu and the girls were not much help. So we ordered everything on the menu. (Not to worry, we were in Poland in the late 70s, they only had about 8 different entrees). I guess, like all Poles, the girls also liked vodka. My brother was, and still is, a teetotaler and I am not much of a drinker myself so we only finished one bottle. After dinner we agreed on meeting up later that night. But our luck ran out, the girls direct line to God must have been reinstated, and they never showed.

My other memory of Zakopane is how little we knew about skiing. Since there were no chairlifts people hiked up to the top of the mountain and took their time to come down. We, the experienced skiers we were, also joined the long line of hikers. Right away something was strange. We were the only ones walking in our brand new ski boots, purchased from the profit of the currency manipulation. Everybody else was carrying their boots alongside with their skis on their shoulders. It did not take too long to find out why. The boots were called ski boots for a reason; they were not designed for walking. By the time we got up to the top we were half dead and our feet were bleeding. Couple that with the fact that we did not know the first thing about skiing and you can imagine what a sorry sight we must have been.  Yet, we had a great time coming down the mountains.

Playing Bridge with Family 2009

Back to Karpacz and to my 13 year old self. Every time my parents went on vacation a small part of the first day was spent on interviewing others at the resorts trying to find bridge partners. In Karpacz they only found one person who could play, so I blurted out: “I could play”. They looked at me incredulously and laughed the matter off. During the second week they reevaluated the situation and let me play. I had been watching my parents and my grandparents playing bridge since I was three years old. In the beginning they tried to send me away from the table, but soon they gave up since my fascination with cards never stopped. They never explained the game, dismissing the possibility that a child can comprehend the game. So, there I was, claiming I could play. So we tried, and grudgingly they admitted that I was OK. When we got back to Hungary, I was dismissed again as being too young. At university, years later, I learnt nothing but playing bridge. From then on I was the one who did not want to play with my parents any more, they never understood what that wonderful sport (not game!) was all about.



In Karpacz I learnt that girls could come and ask you to dance. They often came and asked my brother, maybe because he was good looking but more likely because he also looked Italian. Towards the end of our two-week vacation, one morning in August we woke up to a strange noise. Every 30 seconds planes were flying over us always coming from the North West and never returning. At breakfast, one member of our group, the only one who spoke no other language but Hungarian, came in running and excitedly gesticulating: “Czechoslovakia is being invaded” he screamed. Nobody believed him at first, but we found out, he was right. My parents immediately saw a parallel between this invasion and the events in Hungary in 1956. At that time the crisis at Suez diverted the world’s attention from the struggles in Hungary. The Yom Kippur War was still fresh on their minds and they felt that the Russians and their allies again used the world’s divided attention to crush the Human Faced Socialism of Dubcek’s Czechoslovakia.

Prague 1968

The vacation in Karpacz was abruptly ended, we were told to go to Krakow immediately. The dorms were emptied for us and we were given free food and lodging there. My brother and I enjoyed the extended vacation while my parents worried themselves sick. The borders were open between Austria and Czechoslovakia; it must have crossed their minds that we should do, what we had not done in 1956, leave Socialism behind and move to the West. Soon the order came to leave, go back to Hungary. Special trains were put together and people were transported home, but rather than taking the direct way through Czechoslovakia they had to go around thought the Soviet Union. For the few of us, who came by cars, a convoy was organized and we were to drive to the Polish border where we were given a 24 hour pass through the Soviet Union. We were given enough money for gas and some meager meals, but no hotels. “Let’s get out of there as fast as we can” was the slogan for all of us.

The roads were somewhat better
but it was dark and raining

The trip though the Carpathians was treacherous. The roads were narrow with no signs showing where the road ended or tuned. Missing one of the turns could have meant a dive down the abyss. Driving conditions were hindered by an unrelenting downpour in which only cars with engines in the back could really move at any decent speed. My brother was the “Mitfahrer”, sitting next to my father in the leading car navigating and calling the turns. The rest of the convoy followed our stop lights. One of the cars in the convoy had a license plate starting with the letters “CS”. Some of the “comrades” on the roadside mistakenly took that as the country sign for Czechoslovakia, and let the passengers know what they thought about the mischievous Czechs by throwing rocks at them.  We were forced to improvise; we put black tapes over the letters making them read 08.

Somehow we made it to the Hungarian border by 4 am, after 20 hours of driving in a small Fiat 850. We spent the night in Miskolc.

1969, my second trip abroad but the last one when all four of us went together.

Belgrade

We crammed in our little Fiat and drove south, to Yugoslavia. We spent some time in Belgrade, in fact more than it seemed necessary. Years later I found out that my parents were looking for a connection to hook us up with a mountain guide to lead us across the border to Italy. In Belgrade they found the first link of the human smuggling ring, but our guide at the Italian border never showed up. I was oblivious. I am not sure how serious this plan was, but my grandparents were in the US at my uncle’s place and they were waiting by the phone to get news from us after the crossing. Yet, my parents planned the whole vacation like they have suspected that we would never succeed.

Dubrovnic

We went down to Dubrovnik and Kotor. We watched the crazy divers jump from the bridge of Mostar. We toured the Mestrovic Gallery of Split. We stayed at the lake near Bled. We slept at a campsite that had doghouses for bungalows at the lakes of Plitvice. Somewhere along the way my father got real sick, some said he had typhus. So my brother graduated from “Mitfahrer” to first pilot, while my mother turned into the worst back seat driver ever. But we survived and got back to Hungary. My grandparents also returned, my grandfather holding ten thousand dollars in cash in his hands as he deplaned; asking where he could exchange that legally. That amount of money was a fortune legally, but would have made us all real rich if he exchanged it in the black market. Well, he did not.

Bridge at Mostar

1970, my last trip with my parents and my first trip to the West.

We drove to Vienna and were put up by a man who had some business dealings with my father’s company.  They were working on some plastic doors, which to my knowledge, never materialized. But we got free lodging and my first rotary chicken out of the deal.  Our way took us through Germany for a short time. My father was still not at peace with the Germans, but my mother and I took a more sensible approach and convinced him to drive through since it was a more direct route. But when we stopped at the autobahn and a man walked up to my father and shook his hand and started to tell him that he loved Hungary and that he spent months there during the war, my father was not very happy. He, to my amazement, stayed calm, said nothing, just turned around and walked back to our car.

 Côte d'Azur

Marseille

  I swam in the 15 degree lake of Genf and saw snow for the first time in July on top of the Jungfrau. I saw Paris and the castles in the Vallée de L'Avre. I walked around the cathedrals of Metz and Strasbourg. But I was too tired to go out at night and see Avignon. So I did not dance on the pond but ate snails in Paris and huge sea shells in Marseille at a self-service restaurant. I marveled the architecture of LeCorbusier both in Marseille and in the mountains where his monastery stood. In Cannes we stayed at the luxury hotel of Gray d’Albion, courtesy of my uncle. I had my own room looking down on the Côte d'Azur. My parents went to Monte Carlo and my uncle gave my father a hundred dollars to gamble. He won and kept winning. Finally he had about five hundred dollars. A fortune for us, so he wanted to pay back my uncle, who would not hear of it. My father, the proud man he was, risked the whole amount and let it ride on black. And he won! Well he may have been proud but crazy he was not! He took the money and we ran. We stayed another 4 days on our own and blew the money, eating lobsters for breakfast.

I knew we spent all the money when we stayed in Grenoble at a hotel that was at the busiest intersection of town, and where apparently all the motorcycles had to make sure that they roar their engines at least once a night driving all sleep out of the eyes of the hotel guests. Turned out, most guests rented the rooms by the hour, but this time it was not me, but my parents, who were oblivious what was going on around them.

The rest I don’t remember.