I was 17 in 1989. A highschool student living in Hungary. In 1989, we had a cold, foggy, snowy december and I spent the Christmas time at my father's place in Gyöngyöshalász. I remember it was really cold that winter as I had a serious flu that we even had to go to the doctor.
I was not really aware of Romania. My only experience with Romania was my very first trip abroad in 1986 when we went to the Bulgarian coast with my friends by train. During the trip, we crossed Romania and my friends told me crossing the border might be though because of the border guards there. It was really something that I have never seen before. Only in movies. Soldiers, in green uniforms who had a very different style and color from the Hungarian ones, were running along the train having German shepard dogs beside them. In fact these soldiers surrounded the train so as to prevent anyone to leave or to join while the soldiers systematically investigated the entire train.
It lasted for 5 hours in the summer heat. The officer who finally arrived to our cabin guided by two armed soldiers required us to remove all the backpacks and they have checked every inch of the cabin. They were seeking for people hiding somewhere. I did not remember anyone who desired to escape to Romania from Hungary, so they didn't find anyone.
When the officer recognized that my friends had guitars (we had like two-three guitars in our group) he suspected that we are trying to sell it. To prove that it was for personal use, he ordered with a humiliating face to play something. They were laughing and I felt embarrassed because it was not funny at all. I wouldn't say that I was afraid or I felt in danger, actually thinking back to that age, I find it more weird and dangerous as I did 20 years ago. Crossing Romania by train was really shocking. We saw slums and settles in conditions we have never experienced in Hungary.
3 years later, the communism seemed to be collapsed in Hungary without any blood but in Romania it didn't go that well. On that sharp winter day in 1989 December, I turned on the TV in my father's house and instead of cartoons, a sort of breaking news came to my face. At the age of 17, I found the news totally boring. I had my own political views already, and I had a raising interest toward the changes in Hungary, but demonstrations in Temesvár (Romania) or some later in Kosovo (Yugoslavia) belonged to the boring gray world in my mind. But on that day, I saw something different on the TV. Fights on the streets, people occupied the TV broadcast station and it was obvious that a revolution has arisen. Anyway I had to go to the doctor so the revolution in Romania was the same virtual NEWS to me as when they reported on a strange holiday called Thanksgiving celebrated by strange people with a turkey. I know about it but I have no idea what is it and what is going on.
It seems I wasn't totally unaware because I remember that I have asked my father if we could beat the Romanian army if they attack us. My father used to be a border guard officer until 1980. In my eyes a two legged military expert. He said the Romanian soldiers were usually working on the fields only, so even if their army was twice as large as the Hungarian one they are totally untrained. That was enough to me, I wasn't worried.
Actually today....20 years after the events I have read an article which showed evidences that in 1989 the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu (I can't spell his name I had to copy-paste it) seriously provoked Hungary to start a war. He has his reason for it. Just like in every Eastern-European countries at that time, he also felt that his system in Romania was shaking. To handle an internal conflict the best way is to seek for an enemy outside. And since 1918, there is a certain tension between these two countries. Because after the Ist World War, Transylvania that used to belong to Hungary got annexed by Romania. It was not too hard to find someone to provoke from the outside.
Being in my father's house, I felt totally safe but today reading this article, I have a feeling that we were very close to a real conflict which could bring the virtual NEWS on the TV into our house. And it was not the last time in the last 20 years. Few years after a civil war broke out in Yugoslavia and in 2001 September 11 the age of innocent safety has gone globally.
----
2009. December 29.
0 comments:
Post a Comment