Words for Wednesday :: Travel Log ~ 2 ~ Rejseberetning

This challenge started a long time ago. Now it has turned into a movable feast with Elephant's Child as our coordinator; and the Words provided by a number of people.

The general idea of this challenge is to make us write. Poems, stories, subtitles, tales, jokes, haiku, crosswords, puns, ... you're the boss.
Use all Words, some Words, one Word, or even none of them if that makes your creative juices flow. Anything goes, only please nothing rude or vulgar.

 It is also a challenge, where the old saying "The more the merrier" holds true.

So Please, remember to follow the links, go back and read other peoples' stories. And please leave a comment after reading. Challenges like this one thrives on interaction, feedback and encouragement. And we ALL need encouragement.

-- ☭ --

The prompts for every Wednesday in January are provided by Elephant's Child, and made public at her blog.

For today we had these words:

Destined
Remarkable
Lure
Aware
Rules


And this picture she took at a Hyper Real exhibition in Canberra.

The picture reminds me of many of the despondent women, I met in the countries behind the Iron Curtain. I did not use any of the words, so I have an excuse for writing more.
This is a continuation of Travel Log 1  We're still in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Hungary. Our bus had broken down, and we were slowly travelling through said countries and Greece bound for Turkey and eventually through Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan to India.

We had to talk to people as part of our research. This was made difficult by the fact that only older people - specifically those who had completed primary school before 1945 - could speak anything other than Russian and their mother tongue. The 'old ones', roughly our parents' generation and upwards, spoke excellent German, many adequate French, and only a few English at a level that allowed for conversations on more than basic topics. 

In our studies before travelling, we had read that there was no unemployment behind the Iron Curtain, that people ate well and that children and young ones were well educated and everybody worked for a brighter future.

I couldn't really reconcile this with the queues at the soup kitchens, the lack of goods in the shops and much more.

For example, a lady on the train - she could very well have been a sister to the one in today's picture -  asked if we were from West Germany. After we explained that we were from Denmark, but that it looked a lot like West Germany, she asked us to come back and bring her knitting needles and crochet hooks. We had to promise to try before she let us go.

While we waited for the bus to be repaired, we were distributed to the other buses. We went shopping. As I said, we didn't know the language, so when we saw a queue we linede up - same as everybody else, but without being able to ask for what was available in the shop at the end of the queue. After queuing for umbrellas and fake wool suits, we learnt to send one up ahead and look what kind of shop it was.

Once inside the store, we queued up again. First in one queue to place our order and get a note with the price, then in another queue to pay and get the note endorsed, and then in a final one where we handed in the note and got the wrapped item. Guaranteed full employment, sure, but what a waste of time.

We also stayed at a cheap hotel for a few days while we waited. The reception desk looked like nothing I would ever let my guests see; half-dead weeping figs that should have seen some care the day before yesterday, the carpets were stained, and in the dining room the curtains were askew, and not able to bu pulled either way because the rods had come loose. We asked if they should be repaired, but were told that complaints were to be be written in the complaint book. We looked and saw that guests had been writing complaints about the curtain rods for at least three years.

The system in the dining room was also a story in itself. Behind a counter sat a lady, responsible for  signing our meal tickets before we could eat, but she was doing crossword puzzles or filing her nails or reading, and it could last a long time before she bothered to attend to us.

We wondered and puzzled over all this - remember we were told we were going to see a workers' paradise - but slowly we realised that the hotel, the shops and everything were state-owned, not just the farms and the land. That is, the people who worked didn't feel responsible, they had no incentive to being energetic, nice, service-minded or anything else. Just like the grocer-couple with their sauna told us. Everybody were paid their wages, no matter what, and they didn't get more if they did better, and they did not get fired either, except when criticising the system. All tips were also collected and went to the government, or maybe some fund. We saw the exact same thing happening on our researches in agricultural places and in factories. People did the bare minimum; things that broke were not repaired or were repaired poorly; and in general, no one cared about making things better. I think the yields of the highly industrialised Czechoslovakian farms were pretty much the same as in pre-industrial Denmark.  

We ended up adding a rather critical verse to our Red Star over Czechoslovakia song for our presentation. It earned us more points than we expected.

    Hang the red flag on the school building,
    Put the star of communism into our culture.
    Everyone keeps cadence, just like Franklin Bean*.
    Paper still can bend, but the system is rigid.

We sang a lot o this journey. Songs written by others and songs we made up ourselves. We made up songs like Tyrkie ingrediensi songasi (Mock Turkish meaning Turkish ingredients song), and We roll down the mountains, The Flea Song and then we sang The Bus Song - probably the most romantic and materialistic tribute to the life in a bus:
    One engine throbbing, six pistons beating,
    six tyres against dusty tarmac.
    In time with the farmers' goats and sheep,
    is it a world set apart?

(I'm sorry for once again giving only a word-for-word translation of the songs, and not making them into poetry)

- - - - - - -
* Refers to the 1990 Eponymous movie Wikipedia

-- ☭ --

    Vi skulle tale med folk som en del af vore undersøgelser. Det blev besværliggjort af at det kun var ældre mennesker - helt nøjagtigt dem, der havde afsluttet folkeskolen før 1945 - der kunne tale andet end russisk og deres modersmål. De 'gamle', groft regnet vores forældres generation og opefter, talte fremragende tysk, nogle hæderligt fransk, og et fåtal engelsk på et niveau der muliggjorde samtaler om andet end helt basale emner.  

    I vores studier havde vi læst, at der ikke var arbejdsløshed bag jerntæppet, at folk spiste godt, at børn og unde fik en førsteklasses undervisning, og at alle arbejdede  sammen for en lysere fremtid.
    Det kunne jeg i hvert fald ikke rigtig få til at passe med køerne til suppekøkkenerne, med det manglende udbud af varer i butikkerne og meget andet.
    For eksemplel var der en dame i toget, der spurgte, om vi kom fra Vesttyskland. Da vi havde forklaret, at vi kom fra Danmark, men at det lignede Vesttyskland, bad hun os om at komme igen, og tage strikkepinde og hæklenåle med til hende. Vi måtte love at forsøge, før hun slap os.
    Mens vi ventede på at bussen blev repareret, blev vi fordelt i de andre busser. Vi gik på indkøb. Vi kunne som sagt ikke sproget, så når vi så en kø, stillede vi bare op - lige som alle de andre gjorde det, men uden at kunne spørge, hvad der var at få i butikken for enden af køen. Efter at have stået i kø efter paraplyer og habitter af celluld lærte vi at sende en op og kigge efter hvad det var for en butik.
    Inde i butikken stod vi så i kø igen. Først i én kø for at afgive bestilling og få en seddel med prisen, så i en anden kø for at betale og få seddelen påtegnet, og så i en sidste, hvor vi afleverede seddelen og fik den indpakkede vare. Garanti for fuld beskæftigelse, javist, men sikke et spild af tid.
    Vi boede også nogle dage på et billigt hotel, mens vi ventede. Receptionen lignede noget, der var løgn, halvdøde stuebirke, der burde være vandet allersenest i forgårs, gulvtæpperne var plettede, og i spisesalen hang gardinerne og dinglede, fordi stængerne ikke sad fast. Vi spurgte, om de ikke skulle repareres, men fik at vide, at klager skulle skrives i klagebogen. Der kunne vi så se, at der var blevet klaget over de hængende gardiner i hvert fald de sidste tre år.
    Systemet i spisesalen var også et kapitel for sig. Der sad en dame, der skulle påtegne vores spisebilletter, før vi kunne få mad, men hun sad og løste krydsord, eller filede negle eller læste, og det kunne vare endog meget længe, før hun gad tage sig af os. Vi undrede os, men langsomt gik det op for os, at hotellet, og butikkerne og i det hele taget alt var statsligt, ikke kun landbrugene og jorden. Det vil sige, at dem der arbejdede, ikke følte at de fik noget ud af at være energiske, flinke, servicemindede eller noget som helst. De fik deres løn, lige meget hvad, og de fik ikke mere hvis de gjorde det bedre. Alle drikkepenge blev også indsamlet og gik til staten, eller en eller anden fond, tror jeg. Det helt samme så vi gentage sig på undersøgelser i landbruget og på fabrikker. Folk gjorde det absolutte minimum; ting, der gik i stykker, blev ikke eller kun nødtørftigt repareret, og i det hele taget var alle totalt ligeglade med at gøre det bedre. Jeg tror udbyttet af de højt industrialiserede tjekkoslovakiske landbrug var stort set som i det før-industrielle Danmark.   

Det endte med at vi lavede et temmelig systemkritisk vers til vores Rød stjerne over Tjekkoslovakiet-sang til fremlæggelsen. Det bragte os flere point end vi havde regnet med.

    Hæng den røde fane op på skolens mur,
    kommunismens stjerne ind i vor kultur.
    Alle taler kun om retning, kæft og trit.
    Papir kan stadig bøjes, systemet er dog stift.

    Vi sang i det hele taget meget. Både sange, andre havde skrevet og hjemmelavede sange. Vi sang "Tyrkie ingrediensi sangasi" (Vrøvle-tyrkisk titel) og "Vi ruller ned af bjergene", "Loppesangen" og "Bussangen" ikke at forglemme - nok den mest romantiske, beton-materialistiske hyldest til livet i en bus (Den har vi ikke selv lavet):
    En motor der banker, seks stempler der slår,
    seks dæk mod den støvede vej.
    I takt med bøndernes geder og får,
    er det mon en verden for sig?