Friday 19 September 2014

Bonn



Wales seemed far away, maybe too far away. I was in Bonn, West Germany because Bonn was where you get a visa for those countries behind the iron curtain and that is where I needed to be; behind the Iron Curtain, in the evil east, among the conniving commies. Why? Because that is where Magda lived and I was in love with Magda. Or at least I was in love with  the dog-eared photograph of Magda and with the wonderful turn of phrase that she used in the pen pal letters that she’d sent me every month for the last two years. 
The Czechoslovak embassy in Bonn was housed in a stern looking, uninviting  building. The insides were austere and business-like with none of the warmth of Magda’s letters. The woman with the hairy top lip dealt with my application silently. She was possibly the scariest woman I’d ever met; she just didn’t smile. When she did break her vow of silence  she barked questions in heavily accented English that was a strain on the ear. I frequently needed her to repeat her utterances so that I could process them and answer them. I didn’t want there to be any misunderstandings because Magda was waiting for me in Prague.
I left the building clutching my visa and breathing in the cool German air. The Czech Embassy had seemed so oppressive that I was pleased to feel the autumn sun on my face. But I was happy, my heart was racing, I was finally going to get to meet Magda and her family.

It was to be a torturous route, I didn’t have a visa for East Germany, so had to head down to Vienna and then up through Brno and on to Prague. I was doing German in school, just about to do my last year before A-Levels and I was pretty good, but being in Germany had been a culture shock. My textbook language was nowhere near adequate to keep up with the flow of the natural spoken word . But if Germany had been hard work, it was nothing to the strangeness that surrounded me once I’d reached the Czechoslovak border. The border guards were surly, severe, suspicious. They poured over my visa checking its validity. They checked my bags making sure I didn’t have anything that might threated the integrity of the socialist state. At times I thought they weren’t going to let me in, but finally, once satisfied, I was a love bird and not a threat, they not so much waved me as grunted me on my way.
Brno station was a bare, desolate place that stunk of boiled cabbage. The people, like the woman in the embassy didn’t smile or get eye contact; they just quietly went about their business ignoring the westerner in their midsts.  How I ever found the train I will never know, the language seemed so alien and the people unhelpful but amazingly I got on the Prague bound train. If the station smelt of cabbage, the train smelt of smoked meat and beer. It clunked and clattered along the tracks, the sun pouring in making the compartment warm and stuffy. The old woman opposite me looked at me with disdain, the man next to me drank beer like it was water. The clothes were strange, the people foreign and the feeling that Wales was a long way away intensified. I felt travel sick, home sick, and worried sick.  Had I made a stupid mistake? Who was Magda? Was she as beautiful in real life as she was in my mind? What if she looked like the woman in the Embassy? Oh god I wanted to go home. Maybe it was better to have a dream rather than to try to make that dream come true.
 Adamov, Cesky Trebova, Pardubice, Kolin - Prague didn’t seem to be getting any closer. But then, almost without warning we trundled in to the enchanted city shrouded in a communist cloak. We’d arrived. This was it. I got off the train, my heart beating, my head aching, doubts swirling around my mind. But those doubts soon swam out of my head as I saw the most beautiful smile and the cutest wave as Magda headed towards me.

This story was inspired by one line from Rachel Appleby’s talk in Katowice. I took the line and created a story. Thank you Rachel

2 comments:

  1. 'My line, my story' - not w/o plenty of authorial licence :) Nice one!

    ReplyDelete