| Chess One 2005-03-29, 6:55 am |
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"Hans Jørgen Lassen" <hj.lassen@privat.dk> wrote in message
news:423e98c5$0$91665$edfadb0f@dread14.news.tele.dk...
quote:
> By the way, Wlod's last post was quite funny, though not deliberately so,
> I suppose.
prompted by what was snipped I feel impelled to write my own stories
--------
I had several meeting with people from 'behind the curtain' until that wall
came down, and one after with a DDR person.
The first was on a train called 'the orient express' which started in Spitz
and went to Paris. It was a night-train, and not the luxury version. I got
on in Stuttgart and the entire train was full of people under 30, everyone -
no exceptions. I was perhaps 25. Eventually I wound up in a carriage with a
Swiss, a Frenchman, and 2 guys from Hungary, and someone else I can't
remember. It was a strange party, begun late, 10:00 pm maybe and we were all
a bit amazed to find ourselves on the train together.
In our carriage we settled down and made nervous pleasantries. The
Hungarians were both going to the Sorbonne to study, they were proud of it.
I was going home to England, the Frenchman [lol - who had been away from
France too long was rhapsodic about it], and the Swiss-German cheerfully
phlegmatic.
We began to discuss all sorts of things and then the Hungarians asked about
how much things cost in the West. They didn't understand monetary references
and asked us to say how much work it took to buy things, our wristwatches
for example. I unbuckled my cheap Timex and said 2 hours, and the Swiss took
off a more expensive watch and said "4". Then the Hungarians - they were
wearing thin blue suits, both of them - said that in Hungary it would take
one month to earn enough extra money to buy my watch. So I gave one my watch
and the Swiss guy gave the other his!
After the normal politisms we were able to insist in several broken
languages and - and besides we were all getting hungry by midnight. The
Frenchman produced [how is it possible from a rucksack?] two loaves of
'French-bread' and the Swiss came out with a large bottle of 5-star
champagne cognac! [Never had anything so good since - it must have cost a
fortune, even then]. The other person had cheese and something else, dates?
And not to be outdone from my own rucksack I produced two completely roasted
chickens  )
It was one of the best meals I ever had traveling up the Rhine - then not
even knowing in which country we were - was that Aachen? - no, we don't go
through Aachen or Belgium either - are we therefore in France? - the Swiss
left the train somewhere and somewhat drunk from the Cognac everyone snoozed
off til the morning until the Frenchman flung open the carriage windows and
made huge breathing inhalations and sung some sort of song about the
[freezing but French!] morning air.
Stunned arrival at the Gard Ost, I was talking at least 3 languages in every
sentence, to the utter disgust of a porter when asking how to get to the
Gard de Nord. I didn't speak with the other passengers again after waking up
stupid in Paris, but remember something about the contact - not about the
watch which was trivial to someone with a big wad of Deutschemarks - but
this natural sharing with 'other people' was something I remembered for a
long time. How strange it must have all been for them!
I have written too long - and will make another anecdote in another post -
as well as trying to say what was interesting in these person-to-person
East-West exchanges,not a virtual exchange as we have here electronically,
later seemed to me as extraordinarily valuable.
Phil Innes
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