I am a fan of Tony Scotland’s books, as you may remember from previous posts. His latest has transported me to Eastern Europe in 1989. Tony explains how the book came about in his Introduction.
”Communism seemed to be moderating as the Soviet Union responded to the needs of a fast-changing world. But was it, and what effects were the reforms having? In 1989 I had completed twenty years’ service with the BBC, and Radio Three gave me what was then called ‘grace leave’. I decided to make a long trip behind the Iron Curtain, to see for myself whether glasnost, three years old by then, had made a difference in Central and Eastern Europe, and to get a feel for what lay ahead. . . .
The inspiration for my journey came from two sources. First my friend Adam Bager, who was living and working in Hungary, knew Communist Central Europe well, and offered to show me the ropes and share some walks. Second, the travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor and his classic books, A Time of Gifts, . . . and Between the Woods and the Water the celebrated accounts of his epic journey across Europe in the mid-1930s, castle-hopping to the Dardanelles, by foot, horse, train bus and motor car. Unlike his long walk as an 18 year-old before the war, my journey in 1989 was no heroic trek. Instead I travelled by train and bus, and followed an overland course from the Baltic to the Balkans, taking in Leipzig and Freiburg in East Germany; Karlovy Vary, Prague and the Tatra mountains in Czechoslovakia; Budapest and Szeged in Hungary; Cluj, Sighişoara, Braşov and Bucharest in Romania; Sofia and the Rhodope mountains in Bulgaria. But beyond the bare route – and the overnight stops required by the East German visa – I planned nothing.” (Shadows, Behind the Iron Curtain, Tony Scotland)
He starts at Esbjörg and Jutland (as he had just read Riddle of the Sands) and gets a ride on a Greek cargo ship down the coast to the North Sea, following the course of the Dulcibella, to where the novel is set. He says nothing about the sands and starts on his proper journey into the Soviet Bloc via Hamburg. I am enjoying accompanying him and so far we have got to Bucharest. He is a master of anecdotal travel writing; wry humour and always prepared to take a chance with the people he encounters, quite possibly putting himself in harms way, but adding colour to his account. Why I enjoy his writing is he doesn’t go overboard on history but does give an insight into the cultures of the different races.
I suppose he kept a diary because in 1989 I was living in Singapore and made short trips to Malacca, Penang, an uninhabited small island off the east coast of Malaysia, Kinabalu (climbed the mountain, 4,000 metres) and Sarawak. I have memories but could not possibly write an account with any detail. I was supposed to be working. This mainly involved stretching out my legs to rest on the 18th floor window ledge and use binoculars with Birds of South East Asia on my lap. At that height all I saw were sea eagles which was good enough for me.
In March and April 1989 the young people in the Eastern Bloc were ready for change and capitalism. The people who were not willing to embrace change were the older generation and East Germany’s Erich Honecker, Bulgaria’s Todor Zhivkov, Czechoslovakia’s Gustáv Husák and Romania’s Nicolae Ceaușescu – a group of inflexible hardliners unwilling to make reforms and detested by Gorbachev. Tony Scotland is a good observer of these regimes on the cusp of seismic change.