Venturing behind the Iron Curtain in 1990
My adventures as a young backpacker on routes similar to those in my new novel, plus a YouTube interview
In the year after the Berlin Wall came down, I journeyed beyond the Iron Curtain with only a backpack and a need to see the haunted landscape of Communist Europe before it became lost to history. I was young, fresh out of college, and went off the grid as it existed then, from Poland to Prague to Budapest to Yugoslavia.
Years later, after I drafted my recent novel Lines of Deception, I realized that the story follows some of these same routes. Funny how the brain works.
Here are just some of my stops, filtered through some vague memories…
East Berlin
In April of 1990, the GDR (DDR in German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik) still had a few months left before Reunification with West Germany kicked in.
My friend Tim and I landed a one-day pass to East Berlin. As American nationals, we passed through the famous Checkpoint Charlie, and this history student could not be more excited. The West German border guards were meaner than their East German counterparts, who knew their time was up, though the latter looked far meaner in their bad-ass uniforms.
We roamed as much of central East Berlin as we could in a day while attempting to spend all our East German marks—our pass required us to exchange a certain amount from deutsche marks. It was way too much money. We bought coffees and beers, boxes of cigarettes and books that we had no room to carry. We hit the museums. We ate a lavish seeming but mediocre meal in a fancy restaurant overlooking Alexanderplatz that probably had been reserved for Socialist Party bigwigs and outside businessmen getting their asses kissed for their Western currency. We devoured more coffee and dessert at an amazing cafe with photos of East German luminaries lining the walls. We bought more beers, and postcards, and who knew what, scouting all the while for those once imposing physical traces that would disappear as the Trabis and Wartburgs sputtered by around us.
Random highlights:
The Palace of the Republic, the headquarters of the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) on the Spree River. We strolled right up the front steps and inside the swanky lobby and no one stopped us.
Giving cigarettes to North Vietnamese guest workers gathered on Alexanderplatz with no work and nowhere to go. They had no idea what was to happen to them. I hope they all opened a jazz club and lived happily ever after, but I highly doubt it.
The grand, six-story Centrum Department Store, with mostly cheap-looking luxury goods and many of the shelves starting to go empty. Apparently all leather was actually vinyl in the GDR.
A trio of East German soldiers performing a goose-stepping ritual, like something out of a century before, at the Neue Wache, the GDR’s Memorial to the Victims of Fascism and Militarism.
Discovering a quaint East German state-run brewery—the VEB Getränkekombinat Berlin—and buying more beers, and pocketing the beer mats I still have today.
Roaming the back streets and finding building walls still pocked with bullet holes from the WW2 battles to take East Berlin. A few lots were even still rubble piles—from the war, or from construction projects abandoned? I’ll never know.
Now well buzzed on Kaffee and Bier, but with the sun coming down fast, we made our way back to Checkpoint Charlie, but not before I had a nice conversation with another friendly East German border guard.
Tim and I journeyed throughout Western Europe on trains for at least a couple months, making the most of our Eurail Passes (but that’s another story). After he went home, I holed up in Tübingen, Germany for part of the summer, having lived there before as an exchange student.
In July, I hit the road with another friend from back home, this time well beyond the Iron Curtain.
Prague, Czechoslovakia
It felt like we were the first Westerners to arrive here. Exiting the train station onto prominent Wenceslas Square, we discovered a gray boulevard of once grand buildings. Without the intriguing Skoda coupes and classy wooden phone booths, it could have been 1920.
We entered a state-run bakery shop, manned by stout lifers in white smocks behind stark metal counters. Selecting and buying a loaf of bread required taking a series of tickets until you finally got to the cashier to pay. All to give the people work, I guess. Truly another world.
In old Prague, I remember entering a world of soot-stained wonder and so few tourists, with winding cobblestone streets, the St. Charles Bridge, the castle up above and all points in between. Other random memories include running into a group of dancing and singing hari krishnas. Why there? I’ll never know. We had an amazing time with locals at the U Fleků brewery beer garden, which is still going strong today. At the time, my thirsty young self was amazed to discover that in Czechoslovakian beer halls, they just kept bringing you the pivo until you said no, as opposed to ordering more.
We spent half a day waiting in the Hungarian embassy for a Hungarian visa, for our visit to Budapest later. The grim, gray atmosphere was straight out of a Cold War spy novel.
Krakow, Poland, and Auschwitz
At a border stop on our night train to Poland, we heard border guards having words with an American a couple compartments down. They had a problem with his passport; he was pleading with them that it was legit. They removed him from the train in the pitch dark as he begged and begged. We debated trying to help, but what could we have done? We might’ve been removed too. Looking back, I wish I would’ve tried.
Krakow was another wonder of untouched historical sights with few tourists. We noticed people staring at us in our Western clothes and gear, such as my Diadora soccer turf shoes. And yet, we also ran into a Polish guy from Chicago who’d returned to try opening a pizza joint, and another who recognized my Mary’s Club T-shirt from Portland and said he’d been there. Small world!
Any fun ended there. We made the short trek to Oświęcim, to visit the nearby Auschwitz Concentration Camp, and could feel the gloom immediately. Apparently our train station hotel was where the SS and Gestapo stayed when visiting the camp.
Auschwitz, most people don’t know, is actually two camps. Auschwitz I is the original, smaller camp, while Auschwitz II-Birkenau is a massive complex where the systemized genocide took place. Anyone who says it never happened should do themselves and the rest of us a favor and visit, and if they still say it never happened they can go straight to hell. The signs of death were everywhere, backed up by the excellent camp museum and its documents. We wandered the vast grounds mostly on our own. In a far corner of the camp, we discovered a pond that still held what could only be human ashes.
I took only a few photos at Auschwitz, but to this day I don’t feel right sharing any of them.
Budapest
This stunning yet still gray and soot-stained city looked mostly devoid of tourists (even in July-August), with plenty of bullet holes still in building walls if you looked closely. Apart from the amazing sights, I recall spotting a line of people running for blocks. They were waiting for the first McDonald’s to open.
Having been away from Western news, we discovered a newsstand with a recent International Herald Tribune. The headline, and I’m paraphrasing: “Iraq Invades Kuwait for Oil; US Condemns Attack and Urges United Response.” The Berlin Wall might’ve come down, but a new age was just beginning.
Our last night in Budapest we found a locals beer hall under a dark arched passageway and had the best goulash (over rice) that I’ve ever had in my life, or so it seemed.
The Yugoslavian Coast
After another long train ride and a bus, we ended up in Piran, in what is now Slovenia, a lovely seaside town on the Adriatic Sea with medieval architecture and narrow streets and hardly a soul around. I imagined it’s attracting yachts now.
More busses and trains took us along the coast of what became Croatia. All the beauty came with a shock, however, as Communist Yugoslavia was quickly falling apart. We experienced first-hand just how much these many peoples forced together as one Yugoslavia still hated each other because of ancient religions and wars and feuds. Our night train became a metaphor for the various proud nations about to descend into civil war later in the 90s. Our train car had people from one nation (I don’t recall which) telling us how those people in the next car over (and nation) were all evil devils seeking to harm them, the victims. I remember moving around the train and having the others tell us the same—no, don’t believe them, for they are the devils seeking harm, and we are the victims, and the others must be punished. My German came in handy here, owing to the history of the Balkans. Sometimes I wish it hadn’t.
In the middle of the night we passed a house on fire near a village, the flames high but no fire trucks in sight. Who was to blame? The others, of course.
Meanwhile the economy was falling apart, too, with various forms of currency floating around. You had to remember how many zeros to add each bill to know its real worth.
Split
We arrived in what today, along with Dubrovnik, is one of the main tourist attractions along the Adriatic, and for good reason. The Old Town of Split, Croatia, is the former palace of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. And there was hardly anyone there except us, it seemed.
At the station, a man offered (as was the custom back then) to put us up in a quaint apartment in a centuries-old house near old town. Seeing him there, an elderly woman emerged from an attic window across the lane and showed us a shocking gesture — she drew a line across her throat, suggesting the man’s neck should be slit. For what, I will never know. I wasn’t about to ask. Meanwhile the store shelves were mostly empty except for, strangely, new cans of Western Coke that surely no one could afford.
After Split, I faced a hard choice. After six months I was nearly out of money, with only an open-ended plane ticket home. My two options, as I saw them: Return to Berlin and get a job “working black” in a pub or a restaurant and figure out a way to get a residence visa. Or, return home and start thinking about studying history in grad school. Tough call, but in the end I found a train to Vienna and a flight back to Portland.
A month later, I met my wife, René. So I made the right choice.
In the years since, I’ve lived in Germany and have returned to Eastern Europe many times. Other locations in Lines of Deception that I’ve visited include Vienna, Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad), Dresden, Bratislava, and Trieste.
Lines of Deception came out a couple weeks ago.
Do you read historical or mystery fiction? Are you interested in espionage and Cold War themes? Or maybe you like a thriller with atmosphere? Then this story might be for you. Here’s what it’s about:
In 1949, a West German nightclub owner goes behind the Iron Curtain on a desperate mission to save his brother.
Lines of Deception has surprise twists, little-known history, driven characters who risk everything to set things right, and plenty of period details. It’s the fourth in my Kaspar Brother series but can be read as a standalone.
Lines of Deception is available wherever books are sold, from big retailers to your local bookstore. Here are just a few options:
Amazon (ebook and print)
Apple Books (ebook)
Barnes & Noble (ebook and print)
Bookshop (print, also via your local bookstore)
Google Play (ebook)
Kobo (ebook)
Powell’s (print)
If you like reading my stories, please consider posting a review or rating. Every single positive review on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble and other review-based sites helps a ton.
One more thing: Recently I talked about Lines of Deception and more with inspiring host PatZi from the syndicated Joy on Paper radio show, along with bestselling author Steve Berry. My part starts at 52:27.
While you’re there, subscribe to PatZi's new YouTube channel for more author interviews to come.