A journey to England twenty years later
Last week I spent a few days in England with my mother. She was invited to a class reunion at St Hilda’s College in Oxford, marking 40 years since matriculation and I went along to give her moral support, in case none of her former classmates recognized her (a worry which of course proved to be pointless). On the way from London to Oxford, I realized that the two of us, plus my older brother, travelled along the same road more than twenty years ago, when Czechoslovakia was still under communist rule.
The trip to England in 1987 was my first glimpse of life on the other side of the Iron Curtain. My mum had to start arranging our holidays about six months ahead of the trip. Her friends from Oxford sent money to her bank account. It was to be given to her only after she had received the travel permit; otherwise it would be sent back to England. The permit was only issued to my mother, my brother and me. The communists would never allow whole families to travel, fearing they might not return, so my father was forced to remain at home.
In July 1987 we set off from Prague to London in a Skoda 120 car with my mother behind the steering wheel and a bumper sticker claiming that “women can do anything” (a present from some English feminists whom she had once worked for as an interpreter). As I have already said, it was my first trip to the West, and I was more impressed by the selection of goods in the shops and supermarkets than the historical sights of England. Moving from our three-room flat in Prague to our friends’ four-storey house in Kensington within just a few days was quite a shock to me.
My most vivid memory though, is that of crossing the border between Germany and Czechoslovakia on our way back. The trunk of our car was loaded with old clothes and boxes full of Peanut Butter (for me) and Marmite (for my brother). Hidden below these delicacies were books of Czech forbidden writers. I remember the customs officer going through two of the boxes carefully and finally deciding to leave the third one, which contained all the books, unopened.
Last week, twenty years later, we repeated the journey. Only this time we flew from Prague to London and rented a car to go from London to Oxford. The only thing we really needed for the journey was an ID and a credit card. And the only trouble was trying to think of what to bring back from London, since most of the English specialties, including Marmite, are now available in our country as well. In the end, the only special thing I brought back for one of my colleagues was a Yorkie chocolate bar – we don’t seem to have that in Prague just yet.
The summer of 1987 was lovely and I have always had the best memories of our journey to England. I have to say though that this time was much better.
