Sinossi
In questo libro l'autrice racconta il suo rapporto con la Cina, iniziato nel 1957 quando, insieme con alcuni compagni, si trasferì a studiare a Pechino, all'università di Beida. Vi trascorse 4 anni e da allora non ha mai smesso di tornare periodicamente in quel Paese che l'ha contagiata di un male inguaribile, il "Mal di Cina", segnando in modo indelebile la sua vita. Quello che leggiamo nel libro non è solo un resoconto o un reportage di viaggio, piuttosto assomiglia a un percorso tra passato e presente che si accompagna a un itinerario esistenziale.
Showing posts with label university. Show all posts
Showing posts with label university. Show all posts
05 February 2001
27 March 1981
Article by Dan Lubin in "The Hoya", newspaper of G.U. on Polish Seminar
At the end of the month, Georgetown University will be the forum for a unique and unprecedented program. The United States International Communication Agency (USICA) has agreed to sponsor a seminar between the Warsaw School of Planning and Statistics (Polish acronym: SGPiS) and Georgetown University. The seminar, conceived and organized by Georgetown juniors Andrew Menard and Marco Carnovale, is designed to promote extensive exchanges of knowledge on different political and economic issues.
The USICA is a federal agency with the purpose of promoting understanding between the U.S. and foreign nations. [NOTE: USICA was created in 1978 by president Carter and closed down in 1982 by president Reagan.]
The program organizers developed the idea for the seminar after participating in the G.U. Spring Program at SGPiS in 1980. Upon their return to the States, they contacted the Georgetown Office of International Programs and received father Bradley's complete support. Later they submitted the project idea to the USICA, which was impressed the the originality of the concept, and agreed to sponsor the project. The total grant will be $ 5000, a kingly sum considering the grantees are only juniors in college. The money will be used to pay for the seminar costs and the Polish delegation's expenses while in the United States.
The format of the program has been carefully laid out: there will be five sessions on agreed topics, during which one Polish student and one Georgetown student will present prepared reports, followed by discussion. Afterwards, the audience will be invited to participate in a question and answer period. The proposed topics are: 1) Pros and Cons of Western Credit to Poland; 2) the Polish Second Economy; 3) Joint Ventures and Foreign-owned Enterprises in Poland; 4) the Links between the Polish and the American economies; 5) the Polish Way to Socialism.
In addition to the scheduled seminars, the Polish students will be treated like visiting royalty. The USICA has granted the Georgetown organizers enough money to take the Polish delegation to New York for a weekend whirl of the "Big Apple". Included in this trip will be hotel accommodations, restaurant expenses and a Broadway show--courtesy of USICA. Upon return to Georgetown, the students will be introduced to Father Healy, President of the university; Dean Peter Krogh of the School of Foreign Service, and other G.U. officials. There will be dinner engagements, cocktail parties, and other special functions in honor of our Polish guests.
All in all, the program should be a tremendous opportunity for both G.U. and SGPiS students to exchange ideas. Moreover, it will give the Polish students a rare opportunity to sample the lifestyle of the West, and to meet American contemporaries.
The five formal sessions will take place between April 21-25 in White Gravenor Building, Room 301-A. All students and interested parties are welcome to attend, and no formal invitation is necessary.
The program organizers developed the idea for the seminar after participating in the G.U. Spring Program at SGPiS in 1980. Upon their return to the States, they contacted the Georgetown Office of International Programs and received father Bradley's complete support. Later they submitted the project idea to the USICA, which was impressed the the originality of the concept, and agreed to sponsor the project. The total grant will be $ 5000, a kingly sum considering the grantees are only juniors in college. The money will be used to pay for the seminar costs and the Polish delegation's expenses while in the United States.
The format of the program has been carefully laid out: there will be five sessions on agreed topics, during which one Polish student and one Georgetown student will present prepared reports, followed by discussion. Afterwards, the audience will be invited to participate in a question and answer period. The proposed topics are: 1) Pros and Cons of Western Credit to Poland; 2) the Polish Second Economy; 3) Joint Ventures and Foreign-owned Enterprises in Poland; 4) the Links between the Polish and the American economies; 5) the Polish Way to Socialism.
In addition to the scheduled seminars, the Polish students will be treated like visiting royalty. The USICA has granted the Georgetown organizers enough money to take the Polish delegation to New York for a weekend whirl of the "Big Apple". Included in this trip will be hotel accommodations, restaurant expenses and a Broadway show--courtesy of USICA. Upon return to Georgetown, the students will be introduced to Father Healy, President of the university; Dean Peter Krogh of the School of Foreign Service, and other G.U. officials. There will be dinner engagements, cocktail parties, and other special functions in honor of our Polish guests.
All in all, the program should be a tremendous opportunity for both G.U. and SGPiS students to exchange ideas. Moreover, it will give the Polish students a rare opportunity to sample the lifestyle of the West, and to meet American contemporaries.
The five formal sessions will take place between April 21-25 in White Gravenor Building, Room 301-A. All students and interested parties are welcome to attend, and no formal invitation is necessary.
16 May 1980
Zakopane tour and Juwenalia
Day trip to Zakopane, a ski resort in the Tatra mountains, next to the border with Czechoslovakia. It is still unseasonably cold for May. We take a nice and easy walking tour of the town, with a tasty lunch in a local eatery. Nothing special really, it would be much better to come here in full Winter, for skiing, or in Summer, for trekking. Now we can't do either!
In one quaint shop I buy a tea set: pot, 6 cups, and milk jar for zl 2500, nice souvenir.
Dinner in the evening at the Staropolska. Our local guide, Halska, maintains this is a "typical" restaurant, but I hope she is wrong. It is really nothing special, a smoky joint with mediocre food.
Today it's the start of the "Juwenalia", a kind of youth celebrations during which college students go around asking for money. Seems like a Halloween for older kids. The make more noise and ask for money instead of candies.
In one quaint shop I buy a tea set: pot, 6 cups, and milk jar for zl 2500, nice souvenir.
Dinner in the evening at the Staropolska. Our local guide, Halska, maintains this is a "typical" restaurant, but I hope she is wrong. It is really nothing special, a smoky joint with mediocre food.
Today it's the start of the "Juwenalia", a kind of youth celebrations during which college students go around asking for money. Seems like a Halloween for older kids. The make more noise and ask for money instead of candies.
08 May 1980
Foreign policy exam
Morning at home studying, then light lunch (sort of light) with bread and sausages we got from Marian and Ewa.
There is not much meat available in Poland, not expensive choice cuts anyway. But sausages (keilbasa!) have been our best friends for many meals. Cheap and almost always easily available, they go very well with hearty Polish bread and savory butter. And vodka of course, though not today, since we have to write an exam this afternoon. Not that it will make much of a difference, give the kind of exam that awaits us.
In the afternoon, written exam of Polish Foreign Policy. Easy. Too easy, not challenging at all.
There is not much meat available in Poland, not expensive choice cuts anyway. But sausages (keilbasa!) have been our best friends for many meals. Cheap and almost always easily available, they go very well with hearty Polish bread and savory butter. And vodka of course, though not today, since we have to write an exam this afternoon. Not that it will make much of a difference, give the kind of exam that awaits us.
In the afternoon, written exam of Polish Foreign Policy. Easy. Too easy, not challenging at all.
06 May 1980
Exams and study
In the morning we go for our Political Systems exam, very easy.
Afternoon to study the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, or Comecon. This was once believed to be the USSR's response to the Western European Common Market. But it's always been anything but. Anyway, relations are mostly regulated bilaterally.
Moreover, many countries wanted to join the Common Market, there was a waiting list and no country ever left once they joined. While no other European country I was aware of wanted to join the CMEA, while more than one member state would have likely left already if they had had a chance to do so. Albania actually did.
Never seen so much nonsense concentrated in so few pages like in our course material.
Afternoon to study the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, or Comecon. This was once believed to be the USSR's response to the Western European Common Market. But it's always been anything but. Anyway, relations are mostly regulated bilaterally.
Moreover, many countries wanted to join the Common Market, there was a waiting list and no country ever left once they joined. While no other European country I was aware of wanted to join the CMEA, while more than one member state would have likely left already if they had had a chance to do so. Albania actually did.
Never seen so much nonsense concentrated in so few pages like in our course material.
05 May 1980
Informal lecture on the real political system of Poland
In the morning we have our history exam. The question is "Communist takeover in Eastern European Communist countries". The wording is a bit convoluted, even recursive.
In the evening I am in my room studying for the next exam on "Political Systems" when Stefan pops in and tells me not to waste any time with this nonsense. Things are not like what they teach us. He sits down and goes on for a long time with a most interesting monologue on "real politics" in Poland, ie on how the HQ of the Communist party decides everything and sends orders down the chain of "democratic centralism", all the way to the lowliest head of a small party cell in the countryside.
Most interesting indeed, even if I won't be able to use this material in the exam tomorrow. But who cares? I learned more tonight about Poland's political system than in all of our classes put together.
In the evening I am in my room studying for the next exam on "Political Systems" when Stefan pops in and tells me not to waste any time with this nonsense. Things are not like what they teach us. He sits down and goes on for a long time with a most interesting monologue on "real politics" in Poland, ie on how the HQ of the Communist party decides everything and sends orders down the chain of "democratic centralism", all the way to the lowliest head of a small party cell in the countryside.
Most interesting indeed, even if I won't be able to use this material in the exam tomorrow. But who cares? I learned more tonight about Poland's political system than in all of our classes put together.
19 February 1980
Arrested in a Warsaw Pact military base. (This is not a joke.)
What happened on this day deserves special attention as it was one of the defining days of my life. It was not funny when it happened, though it made for countless hilarious conversation afterwards.
We left Vienna in the morning and crossed into Czechoslovakia with transit visa, with the goal of reaching Poland by the end of the day. We clear the border quickly, little more than ten minutes. Barbed wire as far as the eye can see.
Very few cars on the Czechslovak side, while many buses and trucks slows us down quite a bit. Almost all cars are withre FIAT 124 (Soviet made Lada) or Skoda. The road to Brno and beyond is dotted with hundreds of small monuments to Communism and red banners hailing socialism. One such banners reads: "Our union with Russia is a guarantee of peace". Small red stars are ubiquitous, even on lamp posts, street signs, everywhere.
We left Vienna in the morning and crossed into Czechoslovakia with transit visa, with the goal of reaching Poland by the end of the day. We clear the border quickly, little more than ten minutes. Barbed wire as far as the eye can see.
Very few cars on the Czechslovak side, while many buses and trucks slows us down quite a bit. Almost all cars are withre FIAT 124 (Soviet made Lada) or Skoda. The road to Brno and beyond is dotted with hundreds of small monuments to Communism and red banners hailing socialism. One such banners reads: "Our union with Russia is a guarantee of peace". Small red stars are ubiquitous, even on lamp posts, street signs, everywhere.
 |
| The Iron Curtain at the border between Austria and Czechoslovakia |
This episode was so shocking it deserved an article in the newspaper published by Georgetown University.
Roberta Oster and Pat Singer (HOYA Features Editors), interviewed Andrew and me for The Hoya, and the following article appeared in the 27 October 1981 issue.
Marco: We were driving through Czechoslovakia to Poland where we were to study second semester last year. We had a transit visa through Czechoslovakia which allotted us only 24 hours to pass through, and we possessed a very bad AAA map which had all of Eastern Europe on it.
Andy: Driving along the highway that was delineated on the map, we suddenly reached its end. It did not end on the map, but in reality it ended in mud! There was a large sign in Czech that explained the detour, so we sat there for a little while trying to decipher it. At last, we thought we had a good idea of which way to go, so we moved on.
Marco: There were three options. We tried them all and we didn’t get anywhere. We tried to communicate with some old Czech ladies we met but we didn’t do much better. Finally we decided to try our last option, a very nice road with no traffic, nice asphalt, and a really beautiful landscape.
Andy: We were winding our way through the mountains of Czechoslovakia and the sun had gone down, so it was now evening. We figured we had to be going in the right direction because it was the only road.
After a little while we came to a small sign with no words, just a silhouette of a tank on a yellow background.
Marco: We looked at it and said, “Well, so what? It is the only road.” Ann wanted to go back, but we decided to keep going and came upon this little village. It was a nice village, kind of neat and tidy. Some soldiers were walking around, so we stopped one of them and asked him for directions to get back to the highway that goes to Poland, but the guy really didn’t understand what we were talking about. All he understood or knew how to say was, “Passport.”
We didn’t know why he wanted our passports, but we handed them to him and he took them away. He went into this little room and made a couple of phone calls. Meanwhile, we were trying to talk to him. Between the three of us, we speak about six different European languages: English, French, German, Italian, Russian and Polish. He didn’t understand any of them but Czech, however, so we couldn’t communicate. He called someone else who spoke German, who ordered us to slowly follow him to where he was going. We did, and found ourselves in this little compound. By now it was about 6:00 p.m. There was ice all over the place, and it was pretty cold. He just told us to wait out there for him. So we were out there waiting for about 45 minutes, and it was freezing cold.
Andy: There were people arriving at the building and entering, including a few officers (you can tell officers by the stripe on their hats). Basically they were just trying to figure out what to do. They just didn’t know what do with us. After a while they came out and they called Marco in. So we started to realize that something must be wrong. By this time we knew we were on a Warsaw Pact army base too because there were soldiers everywhere. We all tried to go in and they said, “No, Marco! No, Marco!”
Marco: They took me into this room in which there were a couple of officers with red bands around their hats as well as a few soldiers. One of them was an interpreter—he spoke German. He was the only one I could speak with because not one of them spoke English.
On the wall of the room they had medals from Lenin and a poster of him, as well as a picture of Felix Dzrezhinsky, the founder of Russian Secret Police: I did not immediately recognize his face and asked who it was. Someone replied: "the founder of the Soviet secret police"- I replied: "Do you mean of the Czechoslovak decret police?". Answer: "No, the Soviet secret police". Silly me. Also on the wall, rather more understandably, was a picture of the president of Czechoslovakia.
And there was a guy sitting at a typewriter to record the session. They interrogated me for an hour and a half ...in German. That was the first time I utilized my German other than in class.
He said, “Did you see the sign of the tank?”
I said, “Yeah.”
“Did you realize that you could not get through because there was a no trespassing sign?” he continued.
“Yeah, but we had no choice because we tried all the other roads, and we could not get anywhere. We have to get to Poland within six hours.”
He said, “What if you had found such a sign in a military base in your country? What would you have done?”
“I would have turned back because I would have known where to go.”
Andrew: By now they were ready to shoot us, thanks to Marco.
Marco: Six times I had to show them on the map my itinerary through Czechoslovakia—which cities we were going through. And they kept asking me, “Who are you, Marco? What are you carrying? You are studying in America—why are you studying in America? Do you know of military bases in Italy so you can tell about military bases there?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been in the army yet.”
“Do you know about military bases in the United States?” he asked.
I responded, “Well, I know there is an air force base near Washington; it’s called Andrews Air Force Base. Maybe that would interest you.”
So he wrote that down. And he kept asking me why I had trespassed the line if I knew I could not get through.
And I kept saying, “Because I knew I didn’t have any other choice; I had to go to Poland, and I only had six hours left to get the hell out of there.”
Meanwhile, the others were freezing in the car.
Andrew: It was twenty below zero in February in Czechoslovakia so we were sitting there debating what we ought to do, when I remembered I had a frisbee and a football. So I took them out of the car and about this time Marco joined us. So we tried playing frisbee, but we couldn’t really grip it because it was too cold.
At this point they called Ann in because they had at long last found someone who spoke Russian, which was Ann’s second language. Then the guy who interpreted for Marco, who turned out to be a law student and really nice guy, came out and joined us. Another guy, one of the guards, came over and picked up the football. The interpreter thought it was rugby and said so. We told him it was a new American football, and another guard exclaimed, “Oh, Joe Namath!”
We showed them how to throw the football. Then a couple of other guards joined in. The big guard knew he was supposed to crash into the others (like Broadway Joe). He didn’t know exactly how, so I showed him how to assume a football stance and set the other guy up in one as well. Then I showed them that I would pretend to hike. I indicated they were supposed to hit each other. They said, “Okay.”
All of a sudden there was a group of twenty or thirty very drunk soldiers coming down the hill. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but it seemed very coarse.
Marco: I asked about them, and was told, “Oh, don’t worry about them; they’re only Russians. They’re always this way.” So we started asking about the Russians at the base but they refused to answer any military-related questions.
Andrew: Marco asked to take a picture, but they responded that it would “not be a good idea.” They said they would take the camera away and jail us.
As we were playing football, the guy who had interrogated me picked up some drinks and went to his room. He returned with a little Statue of Liberty (about four inches tall) his uncle had taken from New York in 1931, or some time around then. He had kept that little statue and was always carrying it with him, even on a Warsaw Pact base!
Meanwhile Ann was being interrogated inside for an hour and a half. They accused her of being a spy because she did not know the exact itinerary. She had not been driving since she had been asleep most of the way. Because of this she had made mistakes describing the way we’d come.
Andrew: So they said, “Ah, ha! You stories do not match up. We think you are a spy.”
We said, “Yeah, right. Three unarmed kids in a bright yellow Volkswagen—perfect elements for a surprise attack!” It was not a very spy-looking car with an American flag, a Polish flag, an Italian flag and various decals as well.
Marco: At the end of the whole thing they had both Ann and me sign a six page report in Czech reporting everything we had been telling them. We really didn’t know what it said. We didn’t care either.
Marco: One nice thing: We didn’t have to worry about getting out now because they were going to kick us out of the country, anyway.
The guy who interrogated me was a lot nicer away from the officials. He asked, “Are you hungry?”
We said, “Yeah.” By now it was 9 p.m. and we were very hungry. The interpreter wanted to take us to this military restaurant, but the officers wouldn’t allow him. They said, “It’s now allowed to take foreigners to a military restaurant.”
Andrew: Finally the guys with whom we were playing football were instructed to escort us to the border … so that was really good … they were nice guys. The other officers got a jeep and said, “You are to follow these guys.”
Marco: When we got to the border, our custodian angels got out of their cars to shake our hands and take us with the customs official and passport control. We walked into a dimly lit booth and hand in our passports. Nothing to declare, we are going to Poland to study for a few months. We presented our papers, and the border guard said, “Ooooh, you have been assessed a fine.” “We said, “Yeah that’s right.” We don’t know if the soldiers escorting us said something, or what, but the border guard just chuckled and threw our papers into a drawer, and we didn’t pay anything.
Andrew: In the end, they just said, “You are going to be assessed a fine,” and escorted the few meters remaining to the Polish side of to the border.
We said, “Fine, show us the way!”
---------------------------
PS I am grateful to Eamon O'Connor, editor of The Hoya in 2011, and Shakti Nochur, layout editor, for providing a transcripton of this article 30 years after publication.
Roberta Oster and Pat Singer (HOYA Features Editors), interviewed Andrew and me for The Hoya, and the following article appeared in the 27 October 1981 issue.
Show ‘Em the Way to Go.
Marco: We were driving through Czechoslovakia to Poland where we were to study second semester last year. We had a transit visa through Czechoslovakia which allotted us only 24 hours to pass through, and we possessed a very bad AAA map which had all of Eastern Europe on it.
Andy: Driving along the highway that was delineated on the map, we suddenly reached its end. It did not end on the map, but in reality it ended in mud! There was a large sign in Czech that explained the detour, so we sat there for a little while trying to decipher it. At last, we thought we had a good idea of which way to go, so we moved on.
Marco: There were three options. We tried them all and we didn’t get anywhere. We tried to communicate with some old Czech ladies we met but we didn’t do much better. Finally we decided to try our last option, a very nice road with no traffic, nice asphalt, and a really beautiful landscape.
Andy: We were winding our way through the mountains of Czechoslovakia and the sun had gone down, so it was now evening. We figured we had to be going in the right direction because it was the only road.
After a little while we came to a small sign with no words, just a silhouette of a tank on a yellow background.
Marco: We looked at it and said, “Well, so what? It is the only road.” Ann wanted to go back, but we decided to keep going and came upon this little village. It was a nice village, kind of neat and tidy. Some soldiers were walking around, so we stopped one of them and asked him for directions to get back to the highway that goes to Poland, but the guy really didn’t understand what we were talking about. All he understood or knew how to say was, “Passport.”
We didn’t know why he wanted our passports, but we handed them to him and he took them away. He went into this little room and made a couple of phone calls. Meanwhile, we were trying to talk to him. Between the three of us, we speak about six different European languages: English, French, German, Italian, Russian and Polish. He didn’t understand any of them but Czech, however, so we couldn’t communicate. He called someone else who spoke German, who ordered us to slowly follow him to where he was going. We did, and found ourselves in this little compound. By now it was about 6:00 p.m. There was ice all over the place, and it was pretty cold. He just told us to wait out there for him. So we were out there waiting for about 45 minutes, and it was freezing cold.
Andy: There were people arriving at the building and entering, including a few officers (you can tell officers by the stripe on their hats). Basically they were just trying to figure out what to do. They just didn’t know what do with us. After a while they came out and they called Marco in. So we started to realize that something must be wrong. By this time we knew we were on a Warsaw Pact army base too because there were soldiers everywhere. We all tried to go in and they said, “No, Marco! No, Marco!”
Marco: They took me into this room in which there were a couple of officers with red bands around their hats as well as a few soldiers. One of them was an interpreter—he spoke German. He was the only one I could speak with because not one of them spoke English.
On the wall of the room they had medals from Lenin and a poster of him, as well as a picture of Felix Dzrezhinsky, the founder of Russian Secret Police: I did not immediately recognize his face and asked who it was. Someone replied: "the founder of the Soviet secret police"- I replied: "Do you mean of the Czechoslovak decret police?". Answer: "No, the Soviet secret police". Silly me. Also on the wall, rather more understandably, was a picture of the president of Czechoslovakia.
And there was a guy sitting at a typewriter to record the session. They interrogated me for an hour and a half ...in German. That was the first time I utilized my German other than in class.
He said, “Did you see the sign of the tank?”
I said, “Yeah.”
“Did you realize that you could not get through because there was a no trespassing sign?” he continued.
“Yeah, but we had no choice because we tried all the other roads, and we could not get anywhere. We have to get to Poland within six hours.”
He said, “What if you had found such a sign in a military base in your country? What would you have done?”
“I would have turned back because I would have known where to go.”
Andrew: By now they were ready to shoot us, thanks to Marco.
Marco: Six times I had to show them on the map my itinerary through Czechoslovakia—which cities we were going through. And they kept asking me, “Who are you, Marco? What are you carrying? You are studying in America—why are you studying in America? Do you know of military bases in Italy so you can tell about military bases there?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been in the army yet.”
“Do you know about military bases in the United States?” he asked.
I responded, “Well, I know there is an air force base near Washington; it’s called Andrews Air Force Base. Maybe that would interest you.”
So he wrote that down. And he kept asking me why I had trespassed the line if I knew I could not get through.
And I kept saying, “Because I knew I didn’t have any other choice; I had to go to Poland, and I only had six hours left to get the hell out of there.”
Meanwhile, the others were freezing in the car.
Andrew: It was twenty below zero in February in Czechoslovakia so we were sitting there debating what we ought to do, when I remembered I had a frisbee and a football. So I took them out of the car and about this time Marco joined us. So we tried playing frisbee, but we couldn’t really grip it because it was too cold.
At this point they called Ann in because they had at long last found someone who spoke Russian, which was Ann’s second language. Then the guy who interpreted for Marco, who turned out to be a law student and really nice guy, came out and joined us. Another guy, one of the guards, came over and picked up the football. The interpreter thought it was rugby and said so. We told him it was a new American football, and another guard exclaimed, “Oh, Joe Namath!”
We showed them how to throw the football. Then a couple of other guards joined in. The big guard knew he was supposed to crash into the others (like Broadway Joe). He didn’t know exactly how, so I showed him how to assume a football stance and set the other guy up in one as well. Then I showed them that I would pretend to hike. I indicated they were supposed to hit each other. They said, “Okay.”
All of a sudden there was a group of twenty or thirty very drunk soldiers coming down the hill. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but it seemed very coarse.
Marco: I asked about them, and was told, “Oh, don’t worry about them; they’re only Russians. They’re always this way.” So we started asking about the Russians at the base but they refused to answer any military-related questions.
Andrew: Marco asked to take a picture, but they responded that it would “not be a good idea.” They said they would take the camera away and jail us.
As we were playing football, the guy who had interrogated me picked up some drinks and went to his room. He returned with a little Statue of Liberty (about four inches tall) his uncle had taken from New York in 1931, or some time around then. He had kept that little statue and was always carrying it with him, even on a Warsaw Pact base!
Meanwhile Ann was being interrogated inside for an hour and a half. They accused her of being a spy because she did not know the exact itinerary. She had not been driving since she had been asleep most of the way. Because of this she had made mistakes describing the way we’d come.
Andrew: So they said, “Ah, ha! You stories do not match up. We think you are a spy.”
We said, “Yeah, right. Three unarmed kids in a bright yellow Volkswagen—perfect elements for a surprise attack!” It was not a very spy-looking car with an American flag, a Polish flag, an Italian flag and various decals as well.
Marco: At the end of the whole thing they had both Ann and me sign a six page report in Czech reporting everything we had been telling them. We really didn’t know what it said. We didn’t care either.
Marco: One nice thing: We didn’t have to worry about getting out now because they were going to kick us out of the country, anyway.
The guy who interrogated me was a lot nicer away from the officials. He asked, “Are you hungry?”
We said, “Yeah.” By now it was 9 p.m. and we were very hungry. The interpreter wanted to take us to this military restaurant, but the officers wouldn’t allow him. They said, “It’s now allowed to take foreigners to a military restaurant.”
Andrew: Finally the guys with whom we were playing football were instructed to escort us to the border … so that was really good … they were nice guys. The other officers got a jeep and said, “You are to follow these guys.”
Marco: When we got to the border, our custodian angels got out of their cars to shake our hands and take us with the customs official and passport control. We walked into a dimly lit booth and hand in our passports. Nothing to declare, we are going to Poland to study for a few months. We presented our papers, and the border guard said, “Ooooh, you have been assessed a fine.” “We said, “Yeah that’s right.” We don’t know if the soldiers escorting us said something, or what, but the border guard just chuckled and threw our papers into a drawer, and we didn’t pay anything.
Andrew: In the end, they just said, “You are going to be assessed a fine,” and escorted the few meters remaining to the Polish side of to the border.
We said, “Fine, show us the way!”
---------------------------
PS I am grateful to Eamon O'Connor, editor of The Hoya in 2011, and Shakti Nochur, layout editor, for providing a transcripton of this article 30 years after publication.
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