It’s 6-7-8!

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6/7/08



Today we had lectures from people who grew up in Soviet Czechoslovakia and East Germany. It was interesting to hear about their lives, and what was going on as they were growing up.

First, we heard from Dasa our tour guide who grew up in a small village. Her family worked on a collective farm. She spent most of her time outdoors. Her family had a garden where nearly all their food came from, and they had rabbits and chickens that they raised and killed for food as well. Her father wanted her to learn how to kill the rabbits but she was not a big fan of that. Because her village only had about 300 people in it, there were only 5 people in her grade so she had to take classes with another grade as well. This was until middle school when her school was about 2 km away. If she missed the bus she had to walk, which was not so fun in the winters. For high school, she went to a boarding school in Prague. It was interesting to note that there was something similar to the Hitler youth in Czech Republic. Students had a pledge they had to know and such. It was another indoctrination device. Later she went to high school in Prague to a boarding school which she said was a lot of fun. It was interesting when she contrasted Prague and her small village. In Prague, there was no place to have a garden since it is such an urban area, so people had to buy everything which was nearly impossible. People had to stand in five to six hour lines to get something, hopefully before it ran out. Oranges there were Cuban and they were all seeds: really no fruit or juice in them. Bananas as well were a precious commodity. Things were hard to get in the stores. If you could afford it, then it most likely was not widely available, and if it was in a store where things were possible to purchase, most likely it was insanely expensive. Dasa wanted to be a librarian, but after being in that job for a bit, the government demanded that she become a member of the communist party. She was fundamentally against communism so she quit and looked for another job. She then worked at a place where she processed film. She said that she was very active in the protests of the Velvet Revolution, and she said that it was too soft… more people should have been punished. When asked if she misses anything from the communist regime, she sat quietly for a while and then said the fresh milk from the farm next to her.

Next, a professor talked with us about his experiences. He was born in Germany in1944 in a bomb shelter because an air raid was about to happen. He talked about how he had a similar experience to Dasa since he lived in a small village where his family grew everything. He said that he later moved to Frankfurt when he was going to school. It was interesting to hear that World War II was a subject that was skipped over in school. The generation that was responsible for war was praised as the generation that rebuilt Germany. There was a total denial in schools that World War II had existed. He said his father was a Nazi because he had been forced to become one because he was an airplane builder, so he was helping the war effort. Of course he did have a choice, but a lot of people did not recognize that they did. He said that he believed his father knew about the concentration camps, but did not think his mother did. It was a very interesting talk about how different Germany was in the years directly following the war.

Things to remember: Leave lots of time if you are going to download a movie from itunes, mucosolvin=musinex in Germany, naps are little gifts from the gods, I can’t wait for use of the cell phone again, windows open are a necessity, emergency vehicles here are unnecessarily loud, and cola light that is hot is too bubbly to drink.

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