The cold, dull razor scraped against my thick, tangled beard as the border guard, stinking of plum brandy, laughed into his gloved hands.
“Das ist gut,” he said, expressing his pleasure using the few words of German I understood.
The Danube River – wide and brown – flowed lazily past this isolated checkpoint on the Austrian-Czechoslovak border. My border guard, who appeared to share this one-room stone and concrete outpost with a mangy German Shepard, had insisted that my clean-shaven passport photo match my face. And so the beard, which had sprouted more than three months and 600 miles ago, had to go. The lack of hot water or a proper razor made no difference to this by-the-book policeman.
With the help of some rusty shears, which I strongly suspected had last been used on the dog, and with a straight-edged razor the guard had pulled from a drawer, my facial hair came out. My passport and 7-day visa were stamped and my buddy and I were unceremoniously welcomed to Czechoslovakia.
Autumn 1974. The Cold War had yet to show any signs of thawing, Czechoslovakia still existed and the Iron Curtain was still drawn tight. It was, my buddy and I decided, the perfect time for two UW students to take a break from school and our jobs as ski patrolmen and paddle a two-man kayak from the Black Forest in Western Germany to the Black Sea in Romania.
The journey would take us from Ulm, West Germany (where we bought and assembled our excellent East German-built, canvas covered wood-framed kayak) through Austria’s terraced wine country and on to Czechoslovakia, Hungary and finally into Yugoslavia. The Danube then was literally a liquid thread tying together two worlds that were – if not literally at war – certainly anticipating it.
Literally paddling from one world to another, we floated into a region of conflicting ideas, deep suspicions, fear and futility. We would soon learn – while looking down the barrel of one of those mounted machine guns – that good, or at least innocent, intentions only take you so far.
For the first few weeks of our journey, we enjoyed sunny weather, wine festivals and exploring the small villages along the water’s edge. We would spend our nights either camping in grassy fields along the shore or in canoe clubs located all along the river.
Every afternoon, like clockwork, we would paddle up to a “sport club house” – usually no more than a river-side shack – and strike up a conversation with members heading out for an afternoon paddle. The conversations started easily enough. We were an oddity in this region. And yet here we were, expertly maneuvering our two-man boat through the currents and eddies that entertained and challenged our fellow kayakers.
It wasn’t that Americans were an oddity in Europe in 1974. There were plenty of our countrymen around – but they tended to stay in the bigger cities and spend their nights in the bigger hotels. But to be an American and skillfully paddling down the river, obviously equipped for a long journey – well, that was unusual and invited interest. A combination of broken German and English usually led us to some common ground and we had shelter for the night – often on the floor of a boathouse. And occasionally, we much-welcomed hot shower and dinner invitation were graciously thrown in.
While we were not experts on wine, we did get pretty good at attending wine festivals, which seemed to be taking place in nearly every town we passed through. While we generally knew when to say when, there was one particularly warm afternoon when we had a bit too much of the local vintage. Back on the river, we both dozed off (regrettably I was “on watch”) only to be awakened by the watery roar of a three-foot waterfall that upended our boat, ruined our camera, soaked our gear and generally embarrassed the heck out of us. Boaters coming to our aid politely concealed their laughter while helping us collect what could be salvaged and pulling us safety to shore to dry out.
We had learned early on to keep our passports, cash and visas in a more or less waterproof envelope (a kind of Zip-Loc bag minus the Zip-Loc) that one of us kept on a woven leather leash around our neck at all times. That was one of the smarter things we did because without those visas – which were mostly just stamps on fragile scraps of paper – our trip would have ended at the Austrian-Czech border – clean shaven or not.
As the Danube widens and flows closer to the Iron Curtain, the river scene changes – slowly at first and then more dramatically. The riverside towns – hamlets really – lack the well-kept flower boxes and tidy large public squares common in Germany and Austria. The first large city we came to after successfully paddling over the Iron Curtain was Bratislava. It was while standing in a line at the bread store in this city founded in 1640 that we would come to realize – things had changed.
In Western Europe, we had learned to do our shopping early in the day – not because the shops would run out of bread — but because long lunch breaks were traditional and we would wind up losing precious daylight and paddling time waiting for stores to re-open after a long lunch “hour” – sometimes as late as 4 p.m. In Eastern Europe, it was wise to get in line early because once the daily supply of bread was gone – it was gone. And bread, along with whatever canned goods were could find (forget about fresh fruits or vegetables) and “speck” (bacon fat) – was now our dietary staple.
These kids, so curious and so smart, were stuck. They had no hope of enjoying the opportunities that we – until that night – had taken for granted.
Here we still looked strange and continued to attract attention. We quickly adjusted to being stared at and showing our “papers” to police officers who seemed more curious than wary. While standing in a long line at a Bratislava bread store, we struck up a conversation with a Yugoslav college student who was also waiting. Using a combination of German and English, he invited us to visit his dormitory that evening, to tour the campus and meet a few of his classmates.
We found the dorm easy enough after a quick ride on an ancient trolley. We felt underdressed in our Levi’s and Converse sneakers. Long black leather coats and heavy boots seemed much more in keeping with the environment.
Our new friend was waiting for us in the lobby and immediately brought us upstairs to his dorm room. The door opened onto a darkened room, lit by a dozen candles (apparently the electricity was an on-again, off-again affair and this was an off-again night) with more than two dozen students sitting on the floor or standing along the walls. With minimal introduction, the questions began. Two students studying to be high school English teachers served as our capable interpreters. We quickly realized that these were kids just like us, who were hungry for information about the West. More students arrived as the night wore on and as “sentries” posted down the hallway and even outside the building kept watch.
The questions surprised us a little. The students were not interested in the Vietnam War or even the Cold War. Nixon’s resignation went unmentioned. Instead, they wanted to know about the university system in the U.S., job opportunities, the role of the state in determining our salaries, and in a larger sense, controlling our lives – especially the lives of professionals such as doctors and engineers.
Many in the room were medical and dental students. We learned that our bread line friend was doing his residency at a hospital around the corner from the store and one of his duties was to buy the bread to feed the patients. The candles burned low as we fielded questions like how much money does a doctor in the U.S. make? How many years do medical students “serve the state” before earning any income for themselves? Are American students assigned a mandatory job after graduation? Are they told where to work when they graduate? Was it difficult to get “permission” from the U.S. government to visit the Soviet Union? Were we spies? Or would we get in trouble for coming to Eastern Europe?
I’m sure they doubted many of our answers. Practice medicine as you wished? Live where you wanted? Go where you wanted? Change your major to something you found more interesting? All these were impossible concepts to them. Of course in 1974, the cost of college tuition – especially at a public school like the UW—was very reasonable. And an additional two or three years of school to accommodate a change in major or a change of heart did not come with the burden of the huge student loans that plague so many of today’s graduates.
In turn, we were surprised to learn that as doctors – even surgeons – they would earn no more money (or respect) than a manual laborer. These students, like us in so many ways, would work were they were told to – doing what they were told to do. The eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, and the promise of new freedoms, could not even be imagined in this cramped college dorm room.
These kids, so curious and so smart, were stuck. They had no hope of enjoying the opportunities that we – until that night – had taken for granted.
The candles were now burning out. The trolley system would soon be shutting down for the night. We said goodbye to our new friends and headed back to our barge accommodations. We had learned much more by answering questions than by asking them. But we had more to learn.
It seemed like our heads had barely hit the pillow when loud banging and shouting interrupted our dreams. A heavily armed squad of police officers squeezed into our cabin at first light and told us we would be taken across the Danube to Hungary immediately. We were no longer welcome in Czechoslovakia.
Serving as interpreter was one of the English students we had met the night before – now wearing a police uniform and holding a small machine gun favored by border police. It was pretty obvious that the student sentries posted at the dormitory were looking out – when they should have been looking in.
We quickly packed up our sea bags (breaking “camp” was something at which we had become expert) and shoved off in our kayak, escorted by two Czechoslovakia gunboats.
The middle of the Danube serves as the dividing line between Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Our modest flotilla crossed the border and docked at the Hungarian border station.
The Hungarians had been expecting us. They were uninterested in our facial hair. Our visas were quickly stamped. We were offered tea, warned to stay on the Hungarian side of the river, and sent on our way.
A heavy snow began to fall as we walked back down the dock to our boat. The student/policemen/interpreter stood alone waiting for us. To our great surprise, he presented us with a bottle of plum brandy and a small card with his mailing address, encouraging us to contact him on our “next visit” to Czechoslovakia.
It occurs to me how that had it been a more modern age, he simply would have asked us to friend him on Facebook.