Quote:
Originally Posted by pomi
Hehe, this! They came even into the communist Czechoslovakia.  We were over the moon.
Before, we had those little digi-players, there were three types all from Russia and the most common was a wolf catching eggs (Adri, remember? LOL). It was a figure from a Russian cartoon we had here (wolf and bunny, it wasn't bad actually). |
Oh yes, I did have the one with wolf catching eggs as well! And I love the wolf and bunny cartoon, it's fun even from today's perspective. :-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by pomi
Hm, and when my mom and dad wanted to visit their friends in Western Germany or my dad's uncle in Toronto, they weren't allowed to take us kids with them. We had to stay in Czechoslovakia so that there was smaller chance my parents would emmigrate. And their suitcases were looked through not for drugs or anything like that but for forbidden books (they still got one through, in the jacket pocket). And when in Toronto, they spent half the time not discovering the beauties there, but reading the books from Czech authors that were forbidden at home.
Totality sucks.
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Oh yes... My Mum's brothers emmigrated to Switzerland and my Grandma's and Grandpa's luggage was always watched over... Sometimes the guys deliberately destroyed something they brought from there and had big fun in doing so. My Mum couldn't leave the country without me for the same reasons that you state (until I was about 12; the regime was already melting at that time) and when we once went to Yugoslavia, my father - who didn't take care of me and never paid the child support - had to give his consent for it! When I went to Switzerland at age 12 I thought I was in a fairy tale when saw all those shop windows, cafés and well-dressed people... compared to the greyness of our country it was like Wonderland.
ETA: And I almost forgot to mention that my Mum could never do the job she wanted because her brothers emmigrated, and my Grandparents had to go to the police quite a lot each time they returned from seeing their sons. And of course, my uncles could never cross the Czechoslovak border unless they wanted to end up in prison for "treason against home country".